LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

Class 


GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

AND  OTHER  ADDRESSES 


By  the  Same  Author 

THE  MAKING  OF  OUR  MIDDLE 
SCHOOLS.  An  Account  of  the 
Development  of  Secondary  Edu- 
cation in  the  United  States. 

Crown  8vo.      $3.00 


GOVERNMENT 
BY   INFLUENCE 

AND 

OTHER  ADDRESSES 


BY 

ELMER   ELLSWORTH   BROWN 

COMMISSIONER   OF   EDUCATION   OF   THE 
UNITED   STATES 


LONGMANS,   GREEN,   AND    CO. 

FOURTH  AVENUE  &  30TH  STREET,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON,    BOMBAY    AND    CALCUTTA 

1910 


UQ8TS 


COPYRIGHT,  1910 
BY  LONGMANS,  GEEEN,  AND  Co. 


THE  UNIVERSITY  PRBRS,  CAMBRIDGE,  U.S.A. 


TO 
JAMES   BURRILL   ANGELL 


NOTE 

THE  addresses  included  in  this  volume 
were  delivered  on  various  occasions  dur- 
ing the  first  three  years  of  my  service 
in  the  Bureau  of  Education.  Those  of  the 
number  which  have  already  appeared  in  print 
have  been  scattered  through  various  publications, 
some  of  them  of  limited  circulation,  and  it  is 
safe  to  assume  that  there  are  not  a  dozen  per- 
sons any  one  of  whom  has  seen  more  than  two 
or  three  of  the  whole  collection.  For  permis- 
sion to  reprint  in  this  form,  acknowledgment 
is  made  to  the  publishers  of  those  periodicals  in 
which  certain  of  the  addresses  were  first  pub- 
lished. The  names  of  publications  in  which  any 
of  them  have  hitherto  appeared  are  mentioned 
under  their  several  titles.  Alterations  have 
been  freely  made  in  the  text  and  considerable 
portions  have  been  rewritten  for  this  volume. 
Occasional  repetitions  have,  however,  been  pur- 
posely retained. 

E.  E.  B. 

WASHINGTON,  August  26,  1909. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 1 

II.    THE  SELF-RESPECT  OF  CITIES 25 

III.  THE  DEVELOPMENT   OF   AGRICULTURAL  EDU- 

CATION  43 

IV.  SOME   RELATIONS   OF   RELIGIOUS    EDUCATION 

AND  SECULAR  EDUCATION 61 

V.    THE  CULTURE  OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS    ....       75 

VI.    THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  IN  THE  MOVEMENT  FOR 

INTERNATIONAL  ARBITRATION       ....       97 

VII.  POSSIBLE  CO-OPERATION  BETWEEN  THE  EDU- 
CATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS  OF  DIFFERENT 
COUNTRIES Ill 

VIII.    ARE  WE  AN  INVENTIVE  PEOPLE  IN  THE  FIELD 

OF  EDUCATION? 119 

IX.    CHILDREN  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  :  SOME  OF 

THEIR  NEEDS 145 

X.    TRAINING  FOR  MOTHER- WORK 167 

XI.    THE  WORK  OF  WOMEN'S  ORGANIZATIONS  IN 

EDUCATION 185 

XII.  THE  DISTINCTIVE  FUNCTIONS  OF  UNIVERSITY 
AND  NORMAL  SCHOOL  IN  THE  PREPARATION 
OF  TEACHERS 197 

XIII.  INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  AS  A  NATIONAL  IN- 

TEREST   209 

XIV.  THE  ART  OF  THE  TEACHER 219 

INDEX  241 


I 

GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

An  Address  delivered  at  the  Commencement  Exercises  of  the 
University  of  West  Virginia,  June  17,  1908,  and  at  the 
University  Day  Exercises  of  the  University  of  North 
Carolina,  October  12,  1908.  Published  in  part  in  the 
University  of  North  Carolina  Record,  October,  1908. 


GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

THE  subject  of  which  I  am  to  speak  is 
suggested  by  a  saying  of  George  Wash- 
ington, which  may  be  found  in  one  of 
his  letters  to  Henry  Lee,  written  in  1786.  The 
correspondence  had  to  do  with  "the  present  tu- 
mults in  Massachusetts,"  referring  doubtless  to 
what  is  known  as  Shays'  rebellion.  Lee  had 
urged  that  the  influence  of  the  Congress  be 
brought  to  bear,  with  a  view  to  ending  the  out- 
break, and  Washington  replied,  "Influence  is 
not  government." 

This  saying  went  to  the  heart  of  the  difficulty 
under  which  the  new  states  of  that  time  were 
laboring.  It  was  the  "critical  period  "  in  the 
history  of  the  country.  Independence  had  been 
won,  and  nationality  had  not  yet  been  achieved. 
The  Congress  had  no  power.  It  could  exercise 
an  influence  and  nothing  more,  when  the  only 
hope  for  peace  lay  in  authority,  with  force  at  its 
command.  But  that  critical  time  was  abnormal 
and  could  not  last.  The  saying  of  Washington 
is  true  for  all  time  if  we  take  it  to  mean  that 


4  GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

influence  where  there  is  no  authority  is  not  gov- 
ernment. What  I  shall  endeavor  to  show  is 
that  under  ordinary  conditions  the  power  of 
government,  in  steadily  increasing  measure,  is 
to  be  exerted  in  the  form  of  influence  and  not 
of  force,  and  that  government  by  influence  is 
one  of  the  chief  concerns  of  modern  education. 
A  generation  after  Washington  wrote  this 
letter,  Daniel  Webster  was  a  member  of  the 
constitutional  convention  of  Massachusetts.  In 
the  course  of  one  of  the  debates  of  that  body  he 
turned  to  the  subject  of  taxation  for  the  support 
of  schools,  and  thereupon  made  use  of  the  fol- 
lowing words :  "This  commonwealth,  with  other 
of  the  New  England  states,  early  adopted,  and 
has  constantly  maintained  the  principle,  that  it 
is  the  undoubted  right,  and  the  bounden  duty  of 
government,  to  provide  for  the  instruction  of  all 
youth.  .  .  .  We  regard  it  as  a  wise  and  liberal 
system  of  police,  by  which  property,  and  life, 
and  the  peace  of  society  are  secured.  .  .  .  We 
hope  to  excite  a  feeling  of  respectability,  and  a 
sense  of  character,  by  enlarging  the  capacity,  and 
increasing  the  sphere  of  intellectual  enjoyment. 
By  general  instruction,  we  seek,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, to  purify  the  whole  moral  atmosphere;  to 
keep  good  sentiments  uppermost,  and  to  turn 
the  strong  current  of  feeling  and  opinion,  as  well 
as  the  censures  of  the  law,  and  the  denunciations 
of  religion,  against  immorality  and  crime.  We 


GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE  5 

hope  for  a  security,  beyond  the  law,  and  above 
the  law,  in  the  prevalence  of  enlightened  and 
well  principled  moral  sentiment." 

We  have  here  the  doctrine  stated  in  the  clear- 
est language  and  in  its  lowest  terms.  It  is 
easier,  cheaper,  and  better  to  keep  order  by 
making  men  moral  and  self-governing  than  by 
maintaining  more  guardians  of  the  peace.  This 
is  the  doctrine  in  its  lowest  terms,  for  it  takes 
account  only  of  the  police  function  of  govern- 
ment and  of  education  only  as  forming  law- 
abiding  citizens.  But  if  influence  is  the  better 
part  of  the  power  of  the  police,  then  in  an  en- 
lightened state,  when  we  come  into  the  wider 
ranges  of  governmental  activity,  influence  must 
play  a  still  larger  part  and  force  a  relatively 
lessening  part.  Government  by  influence,  in 
other  words,  is  destined  to  be  a  generally  pre- 
vailing mode  of  government. 

We  are  proceeding  here  on  the  assumption 
that  governments  aim  to  further  self-govern- 
ment. A  central  government  does  its  best  work 
when  it  does  most  to  promote  local  self-govern- 
ment of  a  really  effective  kind.  Local  government 
does  its  best  when  it  promotes  individual  self- 
government  among  its  citizens.  This  is  not  to 
say  that  the  best  government  is  that  which 
governs  least.  Freedom  and  rule  are  not  the 
opposite  ends  of  a  see-saw,  one  going  up  when- 
ever the  other  goes  down.  The  more  a  good 


6  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

government  does,  the  more  freedom  there  is, 
through  increase  of  moral  and  intelligent  self- 
control.  But  it  is  not  self-government  alone 
which  is  an  end  of  government.  The  end  is  a 
co-operative  self-government.  It  is  not  enough 
that  men  be  made  free,  as  regards  external  con- 
straint, but  that  as  free  men  they  shall  work 
together  for  common  ends.  Through  such  free 
co-operation  the  empty  principle  of  liberty 
acquires  a  moral  content.  To  get  together  and 
work  together,  not  through  compulsion  from 
without  but  through  an  inner  purpose  and  con- 
viction —  that  is  a  consummation  which  men 
are  seeking  in  our  time,  and  government  itself 
is  one  great  means  to  that  end. 

We  have  recently  seen  a  striking  example  of 
this  newer  political  ideal,  in  the  conference  of 
governors  at  Washington.  That  gathering  is  a 
thing  to  be  pondered,  from  many  points  of  view. 
Just  on  the  eve  of  a  great  political  contest,  a 
President  who  is  himself  a  consummate  party 
leader  and  who  stands  for  the  most  advanced 
federalism  of  our  time,  called  into  conference 
the  governors  of  all  of  the  states  and  territories, 
for  a  discussion  of  questions  affecting  the  general 
welfare.  The  response  was  as  frank  and  un- 
reserved as  was  the  invitation.  All  who  could 
be  present,  nine-tenths  of  the  whole  number, 
were  there.  On  all  hands  it  was  understood 
that  the  purpose  was  not  to  subordinate  the 


GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE  7 

states  but  rather  to  quicken  their  activity  in 
ways  in  which  the  states  could  work  together. 
The  representatives  of  the  states  not  only  carried 
out  their  part  of  the  program,  but  on  their  own 
account  went  forward  into  new  arrangements 
for  future  co-operation.  And  so  that  most  diffi- 
cult thing  in  political  history  was  accomplished, 
a  positive  advance,  in  which  the  balance  between 
the  parts  and  the  whole,  between  individuals 
and  their  society,  was  held  to  its  true  level. 
Here  is  not  only  government  by  influence,  but 
the  fruit  of  long  years  of  government  by  influence. 

The  terms  which  we  are  using  may  be  em- 
ployed in  different  meanings,  and  a  little  more  of 
precision  is  desirable  at  this  point.  After  I  had 
in  all  innocence  chosen  the  title  for  this  address, 
I  came  upon  exactly  the  same  expression  used 
to  describe  some  of  the  worst  tendencies  of  our 
political  life.  Influence  is  a  thing  not  unknown 
in  the  baser  forms  of  politics,  but  in  such  use  the 
accent  is  often  transferred  to  the  penultimate  syl- 
lable. Government  by  influence  finds  its  deadly 
opposite  in  government  by  "in/Zwence." 

What  we  are  now  considering  is  the  organized, 
permanent,  and  coherent  influence  embodied  in 
the  institutions  of  education.  Public  libraries 
and  great  academies  of  science  and  the  arts  have 
their  part  in  its  exercise,  but  we  can  speak  here 
of  only  common  schools  and  universities;  and 
since  equal  attention  cannot  be  devoted  to  both 


8  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

in  our  one  short  hour,  we  must,  in  this  university 
gathering,  consider  chiefly  the  university  side  of 
the  matter. 

But  it  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that,  in  this  coun- 
try, schools  and  universities  have  been  welded 
into  one  system  and  their  influence  is  one  in- 
fluence. In  our  striving  after  universal  educa- 
tion, the  university  and  the  primary  school 
represent  the  two  poles  of  universality.  The 
school  is  for  all  of  the  people,  but  can  teach  only 
a  small  part  of  human  knowledge.  The  univer- 
sity is  for  all  of  the  sciences,  though  only  a  por- 
tion of  our  people  can  come  under  its  direct 
influence.  But  the  university  unfolds  the  general 
scheme  of  knowledge  and  investigates  the  prin- 
ciples of  selection  by  which  the  scope  of  instruc- 
tion in  the  elementary  schools  is  defined.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  training  and  the  ideals  of 
schools  of  the  earlier  grades,  elementary  and 
secondary,  are  the  groundwork  of  instruction  in 
the  universities;  and  the  needs  of  those  schools 
have  somewhat  to  do  with  the  arrangement  of 
university  courses,  since  the  schools  are  the 
channels  through  which  the  good  things  that 
universities  have  to  offer  are  chiefly  spread 
abroad.  We  cannot  too  strongly  emphasize  this 
solidarity  of  our  various  teaching  institutions, 
for  it  is  one  of  the  surest  guarantees  of  our  es- 
sential democracy. 

There  is,  moreover,  one  aspect  of  elementary 


GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE  9 

education  which  must  be  noted  in  passing.  The 
primary  school  as  a  moral  agency  broadens  out 
into  special  schools  for  wayward  children  and 
the  new  activities  of  the  juvenile  court.  Through 
the  juvenile  court  and  the  public  sentiment 
which  has  brought  that  court  into  being,  the 
educational  purpose  is  gradually  spreading 
through  our  whole  criminal  jurisprudence.  We 
do  not  give  over  the  punishment  of  wrongdoers, 
for  a  government  that  does  not  punish  in  case  of 
need  is  no  government  at  all.  But  we  are  learn- 
ing that  in  many  instances  society  has  more  to 
gain  from  the  moral  education  of  the  criminal 
than  from  his  punishment,  and  we  have  come  to 
prefer  education  to  vengeance  wherever  it  can 
be  made  to  yield  a  better  return.  The  modifica- 
tion of  our  penal  practice  by  educational  aims 
and  methods  is  accordingly  one  of  the  no- 
table developments  of  the  modern  system  of 
government. 

It  is  a  change  in  the  direction  of  government 
by  influence.  The  state  seeks,  as  rapidly  as 
possible,  to  replace  external  compulsion  by 
internal  self-control  on  the  part  of  its  citizens. 
Purposes  consistent  with  the  common  good,  sus- 
tained by  knowledge  of  the  meaning  of  those 
purposes,  and  brought  within  the  sphere  of  hope 
by  the  trained  intelligence  and  will  which  make 
them  possible  of  attainment  —  these  are  to  re- 
place the  rule  of  force  as  fast  as  human  nature 


10  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

shall  render  such  a  change  practicable.  "  Final 
causes"  by  little  and  little  are  to  supplant 
" efficient  causes"  in  our  political  relations.  No 
one  but  an  enthusiast  or  a  doctrinaire  could 
expect  government  in  its  entirety  to  be  so  trans- 
formed, short  of  a  millennium  too  remote  to 
give  us  much  concern  in  present-day  politics. 
But  the  most  practical  of  politicians  cannot 
overlook  the  fact  that  modern  states  are  com- 
mitted to  the  program  of  a  steady  expansion  of 
government  in  the  form  of  education,  involving 
as  it  must  a  relative  lessening  of  government  in 
ilie  form  of  force.  Herein  lies,  more  particularly, 
the  program  of  modern  democracy. 

If  this  brief  glance  at  elementary  education 
has  helped  to  a  clearing-up  of  our  terms,  we 
may  get  some  hint  of  the  wide  range  of  this  mode 
of  government  in  a  consideration  of  the  univer- 
sity, as  the  most  advanced  and  mature  of  its 
organs.  Here  again  we  must  limit  ourselves  to 
a  very  few  representative  instances,  having  in 
mind  particularly  the  service  rendered  by  state 
universities. 

Governors  and  legislatures  now  turn  ordinarily 
and  naturally  to  their  state  universities  for  com- 
petent information  and  opinion  on  a  great  variety 
of  subjects.  Within  the  past  decade  particularly 
we  have  seen  this  governmental  habit  taking 
root.  In  one  state  during  a  recent  session  of  the 
legislature  more  than  a  score  of  important  bills 


GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE  11 

were  submitted  by  the  governor  and  by  legis- 
lative committees  to  different  departments  of  the 
university  of  the  state,  for  expert  advice  as  to 
certain  of  their  scientific  bearings.  In  another 
state  advice  is  freely  taken  at  the  university 
with  reference  to  the  statutory  form  of  all  meas- 
ures of  special  importance,  and  the  state  com- 
missions which  discharge  some  of  the  most 
important  functions  of  government  are  organized 
in  close  touch  with  those  departments  of  the 
university  in  which  the  best  knowledge  of  the 
subjects  under  consideration  is  to  be  found.  In 
still  another  state  the  examination  of  agricul- 
tural fertilizers,  and  other  administrative  re- 
sponsibilities of  large  practical  importance,  are 
devolved  upon  the  agricultural  college  and  the 
university.  This  is  but  a  small  indication  of  the 
extent  which  the  practice  has  already  attained, 
a  practice  which  largely  affects  institutions  on  a 
private  as  well  as  those  on  a  public  foundation. 
It  is  impartial  publicity,  especially  in  the  form 
of  scientific  information,  that  is  especially  ex- 
pected from  the  universities.  At  their  best 
estate,  in  furthering  such  impartial  publicity 
they  are  lending  a  new  character,  a  new  and 
peculiar  dignity,  to  the  government  of  our 
states.  They  are  working  with  the  steadfast 
stars  that  in  their  courses  fight  for  righteousness. 
Of  the  countless  ways  in  which  such  influence 
makes  for  better  things,  let  me  mention  here  but 
two: 


12  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

In  the  first  place,  the  increase  of  statistical 
knowledge  and  of  interest  in  statistics  is  having 
one  result  that  could  hardly  have  been  foreseen. 
Numerical  statements  become  significant  only 
through  comparison.  But  when  comparison  is 
made  between  the  statistics  of  different  munici- 
palities or  institutions  or  corporations,  it  is  com- 
monly found  that  they  represent  such  diverse 
methods  of  recording  and  reporting  facts  that 
they  are  in  reality  incommensurable.  The  im- 
mediate outcome  of  such  a  discovery  is  not  in- 
frequently irritation  and  a  misuse  of  strong 
language.  An  old  proverb  which  declares  the 
truthfulness  of  figures  and  brings  them  into 
patriotic  association  with  the  boyhood  of  George 
Washington,  comes  in  for  its  share  of  satirical 
abuse.  But  this  is  all  on  the  way  to  something 
better.  Those  who  care  to  know  the  truth  have 
more  allies  than  those  who  would  misrepresent 
or  conceal  the  truth.  The  steady  pressure  of  a 
demand  for  figures  that  can  be  compared  be- 
gins after  a  time  to  affect  the  systems  of  ac- 
counting from  which  such  figures  are  to  be 
drawn.  Under  modern  business  methods  an 
improved  system  of  accounting  is  a  key  to  the 
betterment  of  business  processes  and  a  key  also 
to  that  publicity  which  is  the  ground  of  a  good 
understanding  between  a  given  concern  and  its 
constituency.  The  statistical  report  affects  the 
accounting,  improved  accounting  benefits  the 


GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE     13 

business  accounted  for,  and  together  they  bring 
the  better  business  into  better  relations  with  the 
people  whom  it  serves.  So  a  scientific  report 
becomes  the  mild  influence  through  which  a 
real  reform  is  accomplished;  and  if  the  thing 
reformed  should  chance  to  be  some  branch  of 
the  public  or  semi-public  service,  in  which  the 
commonwealth  is  vitally  concerned,  we  find 
that  a  result  of  really  governmental  dimensions 
has  been  accomplished. 

An  illustration  might  be  drawn  from  the  later 
work  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission. 
The  services  of  the  statistician  of  that  body  in 
devising  improved  forms  for  accounting  in  the 
transportation  systems  concerned,  which  may 
serve  as  a  basis  for  more  nearly  uniform  and 
comparable  reports,  marks  an  important  ad- 
vance not  only  in  the  work  of  the  Commission 
but  also  in  the  internal  administration  of  all 
American  railroads.  Of  like  significance  is  the 
activity  in  recent  years  of  the  National  Census 
Office,  in  promoting  greater  uniformity  and 
precision  in  the  fiscal  accounts  and  reports  of 
American  municipalities. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  a  very  different  aspect 
of  government.  The  form  in  which  any  piece  of 
legislation  is  cast  is  oftentimes  a  question  of 
chief  concern.  A  policy  which  has  won  out 
overwhelmingly  at  the  polls  may  fail  at  last  or 
be  too  long  delayed  because  of  the  neglect  to 


14  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

embody  it  in  a  measure  which  can  stand  the  test 
of  constitutionality.  This  is  a  test  which  may 
not  be  applied  till  the  law  has  gone  into  effect, 
and  usually  not  until  the  legislature  which  passed 
the  law  has  been  succeeded  by  another,  or  by 
two  or  three  or  more.  This  is  so  in  the  nature 
of  things.  It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  a  court 
should  pass  upon  a  constitutional  question  when 
it  has  no  case  before  it  and  no  argument  of 
counsel  pro  and  con.  Yet  much  more  can,  un- 
doubtedly, be  done  than  is  customarily  done, 
out  of  court,  in  the  way  of  a  preliminary  exami- 
nation of  given  measures  with  reference  to  the 
constitutional  questions  involved. 

A  variety  of  other  questions  may  properly 
enter  into  such  preliminary  scrutiny:  the  re- 
lation of  the  new  act  to  preceding  acts,  the 
enumeration  of  acts  and  parts  of  acts  which  it 
repeals,  and  all  of  those  other  points  of  finished 
legislation  which  even  a  layman  can  dimly  ap- 
prehend, but  which,  in  the  presence  of  lawyers, 
legislators,  and  jurists,  it  would  embarrass  him 
to  enumerate.  There  is  a  fair  field  here,  it  would 
seem,  for  faculties  of  law  or  university  depart- 
ments of  politics  and  jurisprudence  to  do  a  work 
comparable  with  that  which  has  been  done  for 
nearly  forty  years  by  the  "Parliamentary  Coun- 
sel to  the  Treasury"  in  Great  Britain.  And 
courts  and  legislatures  and  the  people  at  large 
would  benefit  by  such  a  service. 


GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE  15 

A  preliminary  scrutiny  usurps  none  of  the 
proper  functions  of  legislatures  and  courts.  Its 
influence,  however,  could  hardly  be  limited  abso- 
lutely to  the  form  as  distinguished  from  the 
substance  of  our  laws.  For  such  service,  reg- 
ularly organized,  as  it  should  be,  and  carried 
on  through  a  series  of  years,  must  necessarily  be 
more  and  more  affected  by  studies  in  compara- 
tive legislation.  The  men  engaged  therein  must 
come  to  see  the  growing  need  of  certain  practi- 
cable uniformities  in  the  legislation  of  different 
states.  Their  advice  in  the  more  general  ques- 
tions of  legislation,  beyond  the  realm  of  partisan 
politics,  must  become  increasingly  valuable. 
Such  procedure  offers  much  to  hope  for  in  the 
improvement  of  our  annual  output  of  new  laws, 
as  regards  their  consistency,  their  constitution- 
ality, and  their  workmanlike  and  workable 
character. 

I  have  merely  hinted  in  the  briefest  manner 
at  two  of  the  many  ways  in  which  organized 
influence  as  represented  by  the  university  is 
taking  its  place  along  with  positive  law  and  the 
power  that  enforces  law  in  our  modern  systems 
of  government.  But  this  movement  is  not  going 
forward  without  interruption  or  question.  We 
must  now  take  account  of  the  fact  that  our 
legislative  bodies  in  particular  are  commonly  in- 
disposed to  turn  over  any  of  their  ordinary  func- 
tions to  other  men  or  bodies  of  men,  who  may 


16  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

be  designated  as  "experts."  It  is  the  policy  of 
referring  legislative  questions  to  commissions 
whose  members  are  not  members  of  the  legis- 
lature to  which  objection  is  made.  The  reluct- 
ance of  our  federal  Congress  to  commit  the 
framing  of  tariff  schedules  to  a  tariff  commission 
is  a  case  in  point,  and  many  others  might  be 
cited  from  our  recent  legislative  history,  both 
state  and  national. 

I  would  say  that,  in  the  main,  this  attitude 
is  clearly  justified.  It  is  the  business  of  a 
legislature  to  enact  legislation.  The  members 
are  chosen  by  the  people  for  this  purpose.  It 
would  be  shirking  responsibility  for  them  to  del- 
egate this  function  to  others  who  have  not  been 
so  chosen  by  the  people.  They  are  to  interpret 
the  will  of  the  people,  in  the  forms  of  posi- 
tive law.  They  have  the  training  and  experi- 
ence, or  are  at  least  in  control  of  the  machinery, 
which  would  enable  them  to  ascertain  the  mind 
of  the  people  upon  any  question  of  public  policy, 
more  accurately  than  it  could  be  ascertained  by 
any  scholastic  or  scientific  body.  Theirs  is 
accordingly  a  high  calling,  and  it  is  a  matter  of 
general  concern  that  their  office  should  be  re- 
garded with  respect  and  confidence. 

But  it  becomes  increasingly  clear  that  every 
large  political  question  has  not  only  a  side  of  will 
but  also  a  side  of  knowledge.  It  is  a  necessity  of 
good  government  that  the  will  of  the  people,  as- 


GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE  17 

certained  by  fair  political  processes,  shall  proceed 
on  a  firm  basis  of  knowledge,  ascertained  by 
adequate  scientific  processes.  A  legislative  body 
does  not  gain  in  public  confidence  when  it  in- 
sists upon  employing  bungling  processes  of  its 
own  for  the  ascertainment  of  the  facts  of  any 
science,  which  a  scientific  body  is  equipped  to 
ascertain  without  waste  of  effort  and  with  all  pos- 
sible precision.  In  like  manner,  a  scientific  body, 
however  competent  in  its  own  field,  fails  to  com- 
mand public  confidence  when  it  enters  the  field 
of  partisan  politics,  and  employs  in  a  bungling 
way  the  processes  of  which  successful  politicians 
are  masters.  In  either  case,  the  trespasser  upon 
another's  field  is  only  made  ridiculous.  But  since 
science  and  politics  manifestly  must  have  more 
and  more  to  do  with  each  other  in  our  modern 
life,  it  is  of  urgent  importance  that  each  should 
respect  the  functions  and  methods  of  the  other, 
and  that  the  organs  of  both,  in  their  respective 
spheres,  should  command  full  public  confidence. 

It  follows  that,  as  scientific  bodies  which  seek 
to  secure  legislation  must  entrust  their  cause  to 
legislators  and  politicians  who  have  won  public 
confidence,  so  legislative  bodies  which  require 
scientific  information  for  any  purpose  may  best 
turn  to  scientists  of  established  competence  to 
obtain  such  information. 

This  view  is,  I  think,  to  be  strongly  empha- 
sized ;  and  equal  emphasis  is  to  be  laid  upon  its 


18  GOVERNMENT    BY   INFLUENCE 

obvious  corollary,  that  governments  cannot  be 
adequately  served  on  their  scientific  side  by 
sporadic  and  temporary  commissions,  constituted 
ad  hoc.  Those  great  and  permanent  public  in- 
terests with  which  government  has  to  do,  require 
the  service  of  permanent  scientific  bodies,  as 
thoroughly  grounded  and  tested  by  time  and  as 
impressive  in  their  constitution  and  traditions  as 
are  the  other  organs  of  government.  Much  of 
the  objection  to  special  commissions  arises  from 
their  transient  and  tentative  character.  It  can- 
not be  expected  that  legislatures  will  bind  them- 
selves to  the  practice  and  custom  of  referring 
scientific  questions  for  scientific  determination, 
except  as  established  institutions,  comparable 
with  themselves  in  dignity  and  reputation,  shall 
become  the  bearers  of  such  responsibilities.  The 
sciences,  moreover,  are  so  inwrought  one  with 
another,  that  isolated  institutions,  representing 
single  branches  of  knowledge,  cannot  ordinarily 
serve  these  great  ends.  It  is  only  the  institution 
in  which  the  various  sciences  are  all  cultivated, 
in  their  various  relationships,  which  can  fill  this 
large  place  in  our  governmental  system.  Modern 
governments,  in  other  words,  have  imperative 
need  of  the  modern  university.  Nor  is  this  an 
altogether  new  and  modern  need.  It  might 
easily  be  traced  back  to  medieval  precedents, 
without  abatement  of  its  new  urgency  under 
these  modern  conditions. 


GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE  19 

In  the  subjects  to  which  it  has  given  special 
attention,  a  state  university  should  be  peculiarly 
fitted  to  render  such  public  service.  Its  libraries 
and  laboratories  have  grown  to  meet  the  needs  of 
passing  years;  its  faculties  contain  men  well 
seasoned  in  their  several  departments  of  knowl- 
edge, together  with  young  men  fresh  from  the 
best  world-centers  of  instruction ;  it  has  its  long- 
tested  method  and  apparatus  for  the  selection  of 
competence  and  the  detection  of  incompetence; 
it  has  long  concerned  itself  with  the  wider  inter- 
ests of  tho  state,  economic,  sociologic,  and  pro- 
fessional, and  can  readily  turn  its  investigations 
toward  new  and  related  needs  as  they  may  arise ; 
and  its  every  department  is  reinforced  in  any 
undertaking  by  the  organized  whole  of  the  in- 
stitution, with  its  traditions  of  scientific  excel- 
lence and  of  unselfish  public  service.  Without 
political  influence  of  a  partisan  kind  and  with 
little  power  to  enforce  any  statutory  requirements, 
the  university  may  render  the  strongest  possible 
support  to  other  branches  of  government,  by 
merely  ascertaining  and  putting  forth  scientific 
information  concerning  things  in  which  the  state 
is  vitally  concerned. 

It  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that  what  has  been  said 
of  the  scientific  side  of  government  applies 
equally  to  the  side  of  the  arts.  It  is  greatly  to  be 
desired,  and  is,  indeed,  inevitable,  that  govern- 
ment in  America  shall  concern  itself  more  seri- 


20  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

ously  than  it  has  hitherto  with  art  as  a  public 
good  and  a  public  necessity;  and  that  the  fine 
arts  shall  find  in  our  twentieth  century  univer- 
sities as  complete  an  academic  organization  and 
equipment  as  that  which  the  nineteenth  century 
has  gained  for  the  sciences  of  nature. 

In  view  of  the  growing  dependence  of  modern 
states  upon  science  and  the  arts  for  the  attain- 
ment of  their  political  ends,  it  has  been  sug- 
gested of  late  that  the  institutions  of  education, 
with  the  university  at  their  head,  may  fairly  be 
regarded  as  a  fourth  branch  of  government,  co- 
ordinate with  the  executive,  the  legislative,  and 
the  judicial  branches.  The  service  which  these 
institutions  have  to  render  is  so  distinctive  and 
so  indispensable  that  this  characterization  is 
not  wide  of  the  mark.  Education  is,  indeed,  both 
more  and  less  than  such  a  governmental  power. 
It  is  less,  in  that  it  commands  as  yet  only  partial 
recognition  as  having  any  governmental  charac- 
ter whatever.  It  is  more,  in  that  it  underlies  all 
government,  and  trains  the  citizens  who  are  to 
make  our  governments  whatever  they  may  come 
to  be.  In  certain  particulars  our  American  edu- 
cational systems  are  more  nearly  analogous  to 
the  ecclesiastical  establishment  where  church  and 
state  are  united.  Such  comparisons,  however, 
can  serve  for  only  a  partial  characterization  of 
this  most  universal  agency  of  modern  civilization. 
But  public  policy  in  America,  and  doubtless  in 


GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE  21 

other  lands,  would  seem  to  demand  at  least  so 
much  as  this,  that  there  be  secured  to  our  schools 
and  universities  an  adequacy  of  financial  support, 
a  deferential  regard,  and  an  independence  of  ac- 
tion within  the  limits  of  public  responsibility, 
which  shall  be  comparable  with  that  accorded  to 
any  one  of  the  ordinary  branches  of  government. 
While  the  responsibility  for  our  American  edu- 
cational systems  rests  primarily  with  the  states, 
it  must  be  clear  that  the  federal  government  can- 
not be  indifferent  nor  inactive  as  regards  these 
concerns,  when  education  has  to  do  with  such 
fundamental  interests  of  our  national  life.  Gen- 
erally speaking,  the  states  have  now  advanced 
further  than  the  nation  in  the  employment  of 
educational  institutions  as  an  arm  of  government. 
But  the  nation  has  gone  further  than  the  states 
in  the  equipment  of  special  offices  of  scientific 
research.  In  state  and  nation  alike,  I  am  per- 
suaded, the  full  value  of  the  sciences  for  govern- 
mental purposes  can  be  gained  only  by  some  form 
of  academic  organization.  Scattered  laboratories 
and  libraries,  the  special  investigations  insti- 
tuted from  time  to  time,  the  labors  of  special  in- 
quirers, no  matter  how  competent  in  their  several 
fields  —  all  of  these  things  must  be  brought  into 
some  form  of  conscious  and  permanent  cohe- 
rence, if  they  are  to  do  their  proper  work  in  our 
governmental  scheme.  They  are  so  brought 
together  here  in  your  vigorous  and  rising  univer- 


22  GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

sity.  They  must  be  so  brought  together  in  the 
capital  of  the  nation,  whether  the  resulting  insti- 
tution shall  bear  the  name  of  university  or  any 
other  worthy  name.  When  such  a  national  in- 
stitution shall  finally  come  into  being,  it  will  be 
found  to  have  unnumbered  avenues  of  public 
service,  for  in  it  government  by  influence,  so  far 
as  our  national  life  is  concerned,  may  be  expected 
to  reach  its  highest  and  most  varied  development. 

But  in  a  wider  sense  all  academic  and  cultural 
institutions  throughout  the  land  have  their  share 
in  the  governmental  influence  of  the  nation.  This 
is  true  whether  they  be  public  or  private  in  their 
formal  organization.  The  special  responsibility 
of  public  schools  and  state  universities  cannot 
be  overlooked.  But  all  agencies  of  organized 
and  permanent  influence,  scientific,  artistic,  or, 
in  broader  language,  spiritual  and  moral,  are 
parts  of  our  one  system  of  essential  government. 
In  this  land  more  than  in  any  other  land,  such 
agencies  are  carrying  the  new  burdens  of  gov- 
ernment and  blazing  the  way  for  new  modes  of 
government.  The  more  recent  trend  of  our  his- 
tory lends  double  emphasis  to  this  conviction. 

We  have  taken  a  new  place  among  the  nations 
of  the  earth,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  moment  in  world 
affairs  that  we  preserve  our  essential  character 
under  the  strain  of  these  new  relationships.  The 
most  obvious  need  that  the  new  times  have 
brought  is  the  need  of  a  larger  army  and  navy. 


GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE  23 

That  need  is  unmistakable  and  will  be  met,  if  it 
has  not  already  been  met.  The  most  imperative 
need  that  the  new  times  have  brought  is  the  need 
that  we  continue  to  give  to  influence  rather  than 
force  the  leading  place  in  our  political  program. 
The  new  expenditures  required  to  meet  the  need 
of  more  battleships  and  a  larger  standing  army 
must  be  matched  by  new  expenditures  for  the 
increase  of  knowledge  and  intelligence  and 
moral  power.  If  our  expenditures  for  the  higher 
influence  shall  lag  behind  our  expenditures  for 
force,  we  shall  find  the  center  of  gravity  of  our 
policy  shifting  from  its  former  placing  among 
the  finer  elements  of  our  national  character  to  a 
new  center  in  our  military  establishment.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  exaggerate  this  danger.  But 
danger  there  is,  and  it  should  not  be  blinked. 
We  cannot  escape  it  if,  over  a  term  of  years,  we 
permit  our  expenditures  for  war  to  grow  more 
rapidly  than  our  expenditures  for  education. 

Our  power  in  the  world  depends  upon  keep- 
ing our  ideas,  our  standards,  our  convictions  to 
the  front.  To  spread  abroad  the  love  of  truth 
as  the  scientist  loves  truth,  the  conception  of 
justice  as  it  prevails  in  our  highest  courts,  the 
appreciation  of  honor  and  of  beauty,  and  that 
freedom  bounded  by  self-restraint  which  belongs 
alike  to  morals  and  to  art  —  to  spread  these 
things  abroad,  and  through  them  to  win  the 
admiration  and  confidence  of  the  peoples  of 


24  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

other  lands  —  that  is  the  program  for  our  world- 
politics  if  the  higher  influence  is  still  to  play 
its  part  in  our  affairs.  Let  all  institutions  of 
science  and  the  arts  join  with  our  governmental 
schools  and  universities  to  magnify  these  things, 
along  with  our  provision  for  the  national  defense. 
Their  influence  will  double  the  strength  of  our 
army  and  our  fleet,  and  will  keep  us  still  in  the 
forefront  of  the  world. 

This  new  age,  young  men  and  women,  as  I 
have  tried  to  assure  you,  is  an  age  in  which  men 
are  to  be  ruled  more  by  their  aims  than  by  their 
fears.  The  forces  of  this  world  are  to  be  subject 
to  the  purposes  of  the  spirit.  In  a  thousand  ways 
which  no  one  can  foresee,  men  will  try  to  make 
you  believe  that  force  rules  and  the  spirit  can 
only  obey.  Let  no  man  take  thy  crown.  The 
spirit  rules,  and  force  is  only  its  minister.  You 
are  to  be  of  those  who  will  make  this  state  a 
state  in  which  righteousness  is  uppermost,  the 
righteousness  which  religion  cherishes,  the  right- 
eousness which  has  its  firm  allies  in  science  and 
the  arts  and  in  all  liberal  education.  There  is  no 
private  learning  in  a  public  school  nor  in  any 
school.  Science  and  public  service  are  two  sides 
of  the  same  shield.  You  are  servants  of  the  state 
and  the  nation  to-day,  and  we  count  on  you  and 
your  fellows  throughout  the  land  to  maintain  our 
government  as  a  government  by  ideas,  a  govern- 
ment by  truth  and  righteousness. 


II 

THE   SELF-RESPECT  OF  CITIES 

An  Address  delivered  at  the  Commencement  Exercises  of  the 
University  of  Cincinnati.,  June  1,  1907.  Published  in 
the  University  of  Cincinnati  Record,  June,  1907. 


II 

THE  SELF-RESPECT  OF  CITIES 

THERE  is  a  noticeable  difference  in  the 
way  the  men  of  different  cities  speak  of 
the  cities  to  which  they  belong.  Each 
city,  large  or  small,  seems  to  be  represented  in  a 
certain  prevalent  tone,  of  pride  or  disparagement, 
in  which  its  citizens  refer  to  their  citizenship. 
And  this  tone  comes  in  time  to  be  so  deep-seated 
and  habitual  that  it  can  be  altered  only  with  the 
greatest  difficulty. 

It  is  good  for  any  city  and  good  for  its  people 
that  it  should  be  an  object  of  their  respect  and 
pride.  When  Paul  asked  to  be  heard  by  the 
Chief  Captain  at  Jerusalem,  he  said,  "I  am  a 
man  which  am  a  Jew  of  Tarsus,  ...  a  citizen 
of  no  mean  city."  The  words  won  for  him  his 
hearing,  and  they  have  reflected  honor  on  the  city 
of  Tarsus  through  all  the  Christian  centuries. 

We  Americans  are  ready  to  speak  with  familiar 
reproach  of  the  things  that  lie  nearest  to  us.  On 
the  whole,  it  is  well  that  this  disposition  should 
take  its  course,  for  it  guards  us  against  a  too  easy 
complacency.  There  is  something  wanting  in  any 


28  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

society  that  cannot  stand  a  fair  amount  of  criti- 
cism and  even  ridicule  from  those  who  know  it 
best.  Let  criticism,  even  of  the  gargoyle-cartoon 
variety,  have  its  way.  Let  it  tap  along  our  social 
engineries  till  the  cracks  and  hollow  places  are 
revealed.  But  if  our  patriotism  comes  near 
enough  home  to  touch  the  immediate  community 
in  which  we  dwell,  we  shall  make  the  main  note 
of  our  speech  concerning  the  place  of  our  abode 
a  note  of  confidence  and  hope  and  pride. 

For  the  most  part,  we  find  our  people  ready 
enough  to  plume  themselves  on  the  bigness  of 
their  cities,  and  on  anything,  indeed,  that  can  be 
expressed  in  the  superlative  degree.  That  is  our 
"Hyperbole  of  praise  comparative."  But  I 
think  we  may  observe  among  men  of  positive 
strength  a  certain  reticence  in  the  use  of  adjec- 
tives of  comparison.  Things  can  be  compared 
only  by  being  thrown  into  the  same  class.  And 
for  the  more  important  things  in  the  world  such 
classification  is  pretty  sure  to  obscure  some  of 
the  characters  which  thoughtful  men  regard  as 
things  of  price.  No,  comparatives  and  super- 
latives are  not  generally  the  most  veracious  forms 
of  speech.  That  self-respect  of  cities  of  which  I 
wish  to  speak  to-night  does  not  rest  mainly  on 
comparisons. 

Let  us  turn  our  attention,  then,  to  the  things 
concerning  the  higher  life  of  cities  in  which  citi- 
zens may  be  expected  to  take  an  honorable  pride. 


THE   SELF-RESPECT   OF   CITIES  29 

We  do  not  forget  that  cities  have  their  side  of 
shame  which  must  on  occasion  be  exposed ;  and 
we  do  not  deny  that  the  grosser  triumphs  of 
mere  fatness  and  wealth  in  cities  may  have  a 
glory  of  their  own.  But  for  to-night  we  will  con- 
cern ourselves  only  with  the  things  of  higher  worth 
and  of  good  report.  If  there  be  any  virtue  and  if 
there  be  any  praise,  let  us  think  for  a  little  time 
on  these  things.  But  in  making  some  analysis  of 
the  things  that  confirm  the  self-respect  of  cities, 
you  will  not  expect  me  to  make  immediate  appli- 
cation to  your  own  Cincinnati.  The  fame  of  your 
city  is  so  broadly  grounded  and  secure  that  all 
that  I  have  to  say  might  find  notable  illustration 
here.  But  it  would  not  seem  altogether  felicitous 
that  a  stranger  should  undertake  to  assign  praise 
before  an  audience  who  knows  this  community 
so  much  better  than  himself.  Let  the  application 
be  of  your  making.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted 
that  so  it  will  be  abundant  and  will  be  fairly 
distributed. 

The  higher  life  of  the  city  is  not  an  abstract  no- 
tion, a  thing  apart  from  the  city's  material  well- 
being.  It  is  grounded  in  economic  and  commer- 
cial conditions.  It  is  well  that  the  citizen  should 
take  pride  in  the  variety  and  extent  of  the  city's 
commerce  and  manufactures,  in  the  intelligence 
and  integrity  which  mark  its  prevalent  business 
methods,  in  the  soundness  of  its  banks,  in  the 
abundance  of  opportunity  for  labor,  in  the  good 


SO  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

understanding  between  employer  and  employee, 
and  in  the  general  well-being  of  its  laboring 
people.  Without  such  conditions  as  these  the 
higher  interests  of  the  city  will  be  cramped  and 
dwarfed;  and  it  is,  moreover,  exactly  in  the 
maintenance  of  economic  soundness  that  the 
moral  strain  of  its  men  of  affairs  finds  some  of 
its  finest  testing  and  manifestation. 

Closely  connected  with  these  things  is  the  natu- 
ral pride  in  the  city's  government.  Such  pride 
may  well  be  excited  when  the  people  of  all  sec- 
tions and  classes  interest  themselves  in  the 
affairs  of  the  municipality  and  participate  in  its 
political  life;  when  the  government  has  long 
been  free  from  scandal,  or  when  the  occasional 
misconduct  of  public  officials  is  promptly  dis- 
covered and  punished;  when  the  burdens  of 
taxation  are  fairly  distributed  and  cause  no  more 
than  a  normal  amount  of  grumble ;  when  police 
and  fire  departments  are  conducted  squarely  and 
efficiently;  when  the  health  department  shows 
results  in  a  low  and  diminishing  death  rate,  and 
epidemics  are  few  and  of  brief  duration;  when 
water,  light,  and  transportation  may  be  had  with 
no  large  percentage  of  exasperation  over  and 
above  the  ordinary  cost  of  service. 

Add  to  this  a  city's  pride  in  its  public  parks, 
its  children's  play-grounds,  its  well-paved  and 
shaded  streets,  in  the  architectural  excellence  of 
its  public  and  private  buildings,  including  sani- 


THE   SELF-RESPECT  OF  CITIES          31 

tary  regulation  of  the  homes  of  the  very  poor  — 
and  we  have  a  fair  stock  on  which  to  grow  those 
spiritual  graces  which  are  the  finest  flower  of  the 
city's  life. 

After  all  the  rest  is  said,  the  crowning  glory  of 
any  city  is  its  men,  who  make  every  other  excel- 
lence possible.  Who  are  its  eminent  lawyers  and 
judges?  Are  they  men  of  more  than  ordinary 
learning  and  insight  and  power  to  carry  a  con- 
vincing argument  ?  Have  they  persuasiveness  of 
speech  backed  by  a  mastery  of  large  affairs  and  of 
legal  and  moral  principles  ?  Are  there  among  its 
physicians  and  surgeons  men  of  unusual  skill  ? 
Are  its  ministers  of  religion  men  of  great  devo- 
tion and  great  eloquence,  wise  in  the  spiritual 
concerns  of  their  age  and  foremost  in  good  works  ? 
Have  its  artists  painted  pictures  and  its  authors 
written  books  that  are  a  gain  to  the  whole  wide 
world  ?  Are  there  in  it  men  and  women  of  large 
philanthropy  who  have  skill  to  make  their  benefi- 
cence actually  help  toward  self-help  and  self- 
respect,  instead  of  breeding  up  new  pauperism 
for  others  to  relieve  ?  Are  its  social  leaders 
women  of  that  fine  and  kindly  grace  that  strength- 
ens and  purifies  while  it  delights  and  entertains  ? 
And  what  of  the  public  spirit  of  the  city's  men  of 
affairs  ?  Have  they  large  thought  for  the  public 
good,  beyond  their  private  concerns  ?  We  have 
had  notable  examples  in  our  day  of  cities  whose 
business  men  showed  the  power  of  pulling  to- 


32  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

gether  in  any  great  public  concern,  and  the  lack 
of  that  power  and  spirit  has  been  to  the  discredit 
of  other  communities.  It  is  bad  for  the  self- 
respect  of  a  city  to  look  upon  the  ruins  of  any 
great  public  enterprise  which  has  failed  for  lack 
of  wide  co-operation. 

The  public  press  of  a  city  may  be  one  chief 
source  of  the  city's  pride.  We  have  seen  exam- 
ples in  which  a  town  of  relatively  small  popula- 
tion has  for  long  years  influenced  public  opinion 
far  and  near  through  the  daily  issues  of  a  news- 
paper edited  with  unusual  ability.  And  in  our 
more  populous  cities  the  influence  of  the  news- 
paper press  is  a  large  element  in  municipal  great- 
ness. So,  too,  a  city  takes  pride  in  the  influence 
and  general  sagacity  of  its  leaders  in  political 
life.  Under  our  American  system,  every  remotest 
district  of  the  land  shares  in  the  government 
of  the  state  and  in  the  national  government 
at  Washington,  in  the  persons  of  some  of  its 
chosen  citizens.  A  city  may  well  lift  up  its 
head,  when  from  its  people  men  are  designated 
to  bear  the  largest  responsibility  in  state  and 
national  affairs  and  in  representing  this  nation  in 
its  dealings  with  foreign  powers.  The  glory  of 
cities  is  their  men  of  righteousness  and  strength, 
and  it  is  good  for  a  city  to  do  them  honor  so  long 
as  their  strength  holds  fast  by  righteousness.  In 
some  communities  the  position  of  "leader  of 
the  bar,"  accorded  by  common  consent,  is  held 


THE   SELF-RESPECT  OF  CITIES  38 

almost  as  definitely  as  the  position  of  mayor  of 
the  city,  and  for  a  longer  term.  And  there  are 
communities,  even  cities  of  the  larger  class,  that 
recognize  in  like  manner  their  "foremost  citi- 
zen," and  claim  him  as  a  public  good,  however 
private  his  manner  of  life  may  be. 

Finally,  in  this  enumeration,  we  must  mention 
among  the  grounds  of  a  city's  pride  those  long- 
standing organizations  of  men  which  may  claim 
the  dignified  title  of  institution.  There  are  its 
churches,  each  with  a  half -private  history  of  its 
own,  but  each  in  its  own  way  carrying  the  gleam 
of  eternal  aspiration  through  the  fabric  of  the 
city's  life.  There  are  its  hospitals,  its  benevolent 
and  fraternal  and  industrial  organizations,  its 
libraries,  its  music  and  dramatic  art.  Shake- 
speare, a  symphony  orchestra,  and  a  circulating 
library  are  pretty  shrewd  tests  of  the  civiliza- 
tion of  cities. 

The  most  significant  of  institutional  tests  ap- 
pears in  the  state  of  public  education.  Our  peo- 
ple are  generally  ready  to  declare  the  praise  of 
their  public  schools.  It  is  well  that  this  should 
be  so,  and  the  schools  are  generally  worthy  of 
their  confidence.  But  unfortunately  there  are  no 
readily  applicable  standards  by  which  the  public 
can  discriminate  between  what  is  wTholly  worthy 
of  praise  in  the  schools  and  what  is  chiefly 
in  need  of  improvement.  One  indication,  cer- 
tainly, of  excellence  in  a  system  of  public  educa- 


34  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

tion  is  its  ability  to  hold  the  attendance  of  pupils 
beyond  the  earliest  grades;  and  its  provision  of 
a  succession  of  well-ordered  and  closely  connected 
schools,  one  above  the  other,  by  which  the  way 
has  been  made  clear  and  direct,  for  the  poor  as 
well  as  for  the  rich,  up  into  the  highest  ranges 
of  education  which  their  natural  abilities  may 
fit  them  to  reach.  In  this  community  we  have 
the  unusual  example  of  a  city  system  of  schools 
carried  forward  till  it  culminates  in  a  city 
university. 

There  are  two  influences  which  are  working 
side  by  side  throughout  the  land  for  the  making 
of  a  higher  civilization.  They  are  the  influence 
of  cities  and  the  influence  of  universities.  The 
ideals  of  these  two  are  not  the  same.  Not  in- 
frequently they  must  antagonize  each  other.  At 
other  times  each  is  supplemented  or  even  rein- 
forced by  the  other.  The  standard  of  the  uni- 
versity represents  the  noblest  things  in  our  literary 
inheritance  and  our  philosophy.  It  stands  for 
the  highest  development,  the  continuous  devel- 
opment, of  pure  science;  and  in  our  American 
educational  system  it  has  come  almost  equally 
to  stand  for  the  best  attainments  in  the  applied 
sciences.  There  is  promise  that  in  future  it 
will  join  art  to  science,  and  so  greatly  enlarge  its 
purpose  and  its  influence.  Already  the  begin- 
ning of  this  movement  of  the  fine  arts  toward 
affiliation  with  the  universities  is  seen,  and  we 


THE   SELF-RESPECT   OF   CITIES  35 

may  confidently  expect  that  the  movement  will 
go  on  without  interruption.  In  literature,  in 
philosophy,  in  natural  science,  the  university 
stands  for  pure  devotion  to  truth,  without  a 
thought  of  gain  or  of  any  extraneous  advantage. 
Its  moral  purpose  is  expressed  in  sheer,  unself- 
ish devotion  to  the  public  good  as  furthered  by 
an  unswerving  search  for  truth. 

The  life  of  the  city,  on  the  other  hand,  involves 
the  employment  of  the  most  concrete  and  power- 
ful forces,  material  and  economic.  It  makes  of 
wealth  and  man's  ambition  a  kind  of  universal 
instrument  of  its  activities.  But  its  foremost 
characteristic  is  its  concentration  of  human 
intercourse.  It  sharpens  the  faculties  of  men  by 
insistent  opposition  of  ideas ;  but  it  also  teaches 
men  urbanity,  an  open-minded  appreciation  of 
the  differing  tastes  and  standards  of  many  and 
diverse  minds.  It  sets,  moreover,  a  standard  of 
its  own  in  the  meeting  of  men  with  men,  a  stand- 
ard of  social  manner  and  common  courtesy. 
Its  moral  purpose  is  seen  in  the  effort  to  find  the 
best  ways  of  varied  co-operation  with  one's  fel- 
low men,  for  the  furtherance  of  the  common 
good. 

There  is  nothing  more  vital  in  our  modern 
life  than  the  interaction  of  these  two  ideals  — 
the  academic  freedom  of  the  university  and  the 
efficient  cosmopolitanism  of  the  city. 

Wherever  a  great  university  is  located  in  a 


36  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

great  center  of  population  the  two  types  of  in- 
fluence meet  and  mingle  in  ways  that  are  full 
of  significance.  But  where  the  two  are  bound 
together  so  intimately  as  in  this  community, 
where  the  university  is  part  of  the  public  system 
of  education  and  the  crowning  member  of  that 
system,  there  is  opportunity  for  peculiarly  fruit- 
ful relations  between  them.  The  university  is 
at  once  an  added  mark  of  civic  distinction  and 
an  agency  deliberately  erected  by  the  city  to 
influence  and  possibly  to  recast  the  ideals  and 
purposes  of  the  city's  life.  What,  under  these 
circumstances,  have  they  a  right  to  expect  each 
from  the  other?  And  in  the  first  place,  what 
may  the  university  expect  from  the  city  which  it 
adorns  ? 

I  can  speak  only  as  an  inquirer  into  general 
educational  movements  and  not  as  one  having 
any  intimate  knowledge  of  the  local  situation 
here  in  Cincinnati.  From  this  point  of  view, 
it  would  seem  that  the  university  may  expect  the 
city  to  understand  its  place  and  purpose,  to  hold 
it  in  the  foremost  rank  among  the  objects  of 
civic  pride,  and  to  give  it  the  moral  and  financial 
support  that  it  needs  for  the  attainment  of  the 
highest  academic  ideals.  The  purpose  to  be  a 
full  modern  university  is  a  high  ambition  and 
more  difficult  of  attainment  than  can  be  readily 
appreciated.  For  the  modern  university  reaches 
out  over  many  fields  of  knowledge.  In  the  most 


THE   SELF-RESPECT   OF   CITIES  37 

of  those  fields  the  best  equipment,  in  books  and 
apparatus,  is  costly  and  must  be  frequently  re- 
newed. A  university,  too,  must  have  chiefly 
men:  men  of  such  eminence  in  their  several 
fields  that  they  are  known  in  the  great  world  of 
scholarship;  men  who  are  growing  by  research 
and  becoming  better  known  from  year  to  year; 
men  of  such  devotion  to  science  and  to  the  public 
good  that  they  are  an  honor  and  an  asset  of 
great  worth  to  any  community  to  which  they 
may  belong.  Such  men  are  in  demand  in  the 
university  world.  There  are  not  enough  of 
them  to  supply  the  need.  The  utmost  care  in 
the  selection  of  such  men  and  care  to  hold  them 
when  they  have  been  attached  to  the  university 
are  among  the  first  requisites  in  the  management 
of  such  an  institution.  Every  university  rightly 
desires  to  have  in  its  faculty  at  least  one  or  two 
men,  or  more,  who  are  the  recognized  leaders 
of  the  world  in  their  several  departments. 

The  relation  of  a  city  university  to  the  city 
system  of  schools  adds  emphasis  to  considera- 
tions such  as  these.  It  is  to  be  a  drawing  force 
which  shall  lure  young  people  of  promise  up 
into  those  grades  of  study  in  which  their  talents 
may  expand  and  reach  their  fit  employment.  It 
is  to  set  high  the  standard  of  scholarship  and 
of  training  for  efficiency.  The  community  should 
understand  the  greatness  of  this  service  and 
should  turn  the  powerful  forces  that  it  has  always 


38  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

at  command  to  the  support  of  the  institution 
which  renders  such  service. 

What,  in  turn,  may  the  city  expect  from  the 
university?  It  may  expect  that  every  pupil  in 
every  one  of  its  primary  schools  and  higher 
schools  will  be  better  taught,  and  will  receive 
more  of  stimulus  to  higher  things,  for  what  the 
university  has  to  give.  It  may  expect  that  the 
hard  commercialism  of  city  life  will  be  relieved 
by  association  with  pure  devotion  to  science 
and  things  of  the  spirit.  It  may  expect  that 
its  reputation  will  be  enhanced  and  men  shall 
find  it  a  better  place  to  live  because  the  univer- 
sity is  there.  It  may  expect  that  the  other  things 
which  make  for  its  honor  and  the  higher  life,  its 
libraries,  its  museums,  its  music  and  all  of  the 
arts,  its  institutions  of  religion  and  philanthropy, 
will  all  receive  manifold  reinforcement  and  bet- 
terment, direct  and  indirect,  from  those  influ- 
ences which  the  university  shall  in  time  send 
forth. 

And  this  is  not  all.  For  the  city  and  the  uni- 
versity must  each  react  upon  the  other.  The 
industrial  needs  of  the  community  will  give 
stimulus  and  direction  to  activities  of  the  uni- 
versity. Pure  science  will  be  brought  home  to 
the  processes  of  daily  life.  Your  factories  will 
do  better  work  and  make  profit  from  the  saving 
of  what  now  goes  to  waste,  because  of  better 
machines  and  methods  and  better  men  that  the 


THE  SELF-RESPECT  OP  CITIES          39 

schools  will  provide  to  meet  the  present  need. 
The  best  commercial  experience  will  be  gath- 
ered up  by  the  university  and  be  organized  into 
courses  of  training,  and  from  those  courses  of 
training  men  and  women  will  go  forth  to  carry 
the  better  methods  everywhere.  Teachers  trained 
in  this  university  and  in  other  universities  will 
carry  the  higher  culture  and  the  spirit  of  scientific 
improvement  into  all  of  the  elementary  schools 
and  so  into  all  of  the  city's  homes.  Through 
such  activities  as  these,  the  university  will  break 
through  the  isolation  which  has  too  often 
shrouded  institutions  of  learning  and  will  give 
itself  frankly  and  freely  to  a  real  participation  in 
the  real  life  of  the  city.  The  outlook  to  such 
reciprocal  relations  between  these  two  great, 
formative  influences  in  modern  civilization  is 
encouraging  and  inspiring.  The  modern  uni- 
versity is  almost  a  city  in  itself.  The  modern 
city  is  responding  to  university  influences.  And 
when  a  great  community  assumes  direction  of  a 
great  institution  of  learning,  it  cannot  fail  to  edu- 
cate itself  in  the  very  endeavor  to  understand 
and  to  maintain  the  higher  education. 

One  thing  in  particular  I  should  like  to  say 
to  the  men  of  the  University  of  Cincinnati,  and 
one  thing  to  the  members  of  this  graduating 
class.  As  a  friend  and  brother,  let  me  charge 
you,  of  the  University,  as  I  would  charge  the 
members  of  any  university :  Hold  fast  to  the  aca- 
demic ideal  of  pure  devotion  to  truth.  You  are 


40  GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

seeking  to  bring  the  university  into  the  closest 
touch  with  the  city's  varied  needs.  And  that  is 
well.  It  is  clearly  the  work  for  universities  in 
this  day,  and  untold  good  is  to  come  from  that 
work.  But  while  doing  this  work,  leave  not 
the  other  undone.  Your  most  effective  service, 
your  most  practical  service,  depends  ultimately 
upon  your  steadfast  devotion  to  pure  scholarship 
and  scientific  ideals.  Do  not  lower  any  scientific 
standard  for  the  sake  of  popularity.  Do  not  let 
zeal  for  immediate  commercial  applications  di- 
minish your  zeal  in  the  pursuit  of  truth  for  its 
own  sake.  Your  strength  and  influence  and  your 
ability  to  serve  are  all  bound  up  with  your  essen- 
tial loyalty  to  the  abiding  spirit  of  the  true  uni- 
versity. Such  loyalty  is  a  thing  hard  to  achieve 
and  desperately  hard  to  maintain,  but  it  is  your 
very  life. 

I  have  no  reason  to  believe  that  special  ex- 
hortation is  needed  here;  but  is  not  the  need  a 
present  need  and  the  danger  of  defection  a 
present  danger  everywhere,  because  of  the  very 
loftiness  and  severity  of  the  ideal  ? 

And  you,  young  men  and  women  of  this  class, 
let  me  charge  you  that  from  the  university  you 
carry  into  the  life  of  the  city  a  lasting  devotion  to 
the  things  that  make  for  the  city's  good  name. 
The  true  ideals  of  the  university  and  the  higher 
ideals  of  the  city  are  in  harmony  with  each  other, 
and  the  city  can  greatly  extend  and  enlarge  the 
education  given  you  by  the  university.  But 


THE  SELF-RESPECT  OP  CITIES  41 

there  are  lower  ideals  of  city  life  with  which  the 
true  university  spirit  must  wage  incessant  war- 
fare, and  I  hope  you  will  wage  that  warfare  by 
direct  participation  in  the  political  and  social 
affairs  of  the  city.  The  great  enemies  are  indif- 
ference and  cynicism.  When  men  try  to  per- 
suade you  that  the  improvement  of  the  life  of  the 
city  and  the  progressive  wiping-out  of  evils  is  all 
an  academic  dream,  be  fully  assured  that  you  are 
tempted  of  the  devil.  The  merit  system  in  the 
public  service,  the  attempt  to  improve  the  condi- 
tion of  the  very  poor,  the  striving  after  a  better 
understanding  between  capital  and  labor,  and  all 
other  urgent  questions  in  the  life  of  our  munici- 
palities —  the  true  university  spirit  has  something 
to  offer  toward  the  solution  of  these  problems. 
But  if  the  problems  were  easy  there  would  be  no 
need  of  the  university  spirit  in  dealing  with  them 
and  no  need  of  your  giving  them  a  thought.  It 
is  exactly  because  they  are  hard,  and  because 
men  say  that  nothing  can  be  done,  and  because 
university  ideals  are  held  to  be  quixotic  and 
powerless  in  the  face  of  such  real  difficulties, 
that  you  who  have  caught  the  university  spirit 
should  enter  the  struggle  and  stay  with  it  to  the 
end.  If  university  graduates  will  fight  it  out 
along  that  line  in  all  the  cities  of  our  land,  it  will 
appear  that  there  is  nothing  better  for  the  self- 
respect  of  cities  than  the  things  that  universities 
have  to  give. 


Ill 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF   AGRICUL- 
TURAL EDUCATION 

An  Address  delivered  at  the  Fiftieth  Anniversary  Exercises 
of  the  Michigan  Agricultural  College,  at  Lansing, 
Michigan,  as  Part  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  Twenty- 
first  Annual  Convention  of  the  Association  of  American 
Agricultural  Colleges  and  Experiment  Stations,  May 
30,  1907.  Published  in  Bulletin  196  of  the  office  of 
Experiment  Stations,  United  States  Department  of  Agri- 
culture, December  10,  1907. 


Ill 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  AGRICULTURAL 
EDUCATION 

THE  pioneer  farmers  of  America  had  a 
double  interest  in  life.  First  and  fore- 
most, they  were  pioneers,  with  all  of 
the  dangers  and  excitements  of  that  pioneer  life. 
Secondarily,  they  were  farmers.  It  was  hard 
and  rude  and  unskillful,  the  farming  in  which 
they  were  engaged,  but  it  gave  them  the  neces- 
saries of  life.  When  the  first  dull  opposition  of 
nature  was  overcome,  when  cabins  had  been 
built  and  woodlands  cleared  and  the  plow  had 
in  some  way  done  its  first  work,  the  soil  showed 
itself  responsive  and  fertile  enough.  For  a  time, 
at  least,  life  was  easier.  But  the  zest  of  pioneer- 
ing was  gone,  and  the  more  adventurous  of  our 
people  soon  moved  on  to  the  West,  where  they 
might  feel  the  thin  edge  of  civilization  still  cutting 
its  earliest  way  through  raw  nature  and  barba- 
rism, and  know  that  that  keen  edge  was  their 
own  life  and  endeavor.  The  farmers  who  re- 
mained behind  were  now  farmers  only  and  no 
longer  pioneers.  They  saw  the  first  rank  fertil- 


46  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

ity  of  the  soil  fall  back  into  more  moderate 
bounds.  Their  life  became  tame  and  binding. 
New  wants  arose  with  the  rise  of  new  social 
relations.  A  few  in  every  community  were 
able,  by  insight  and  energy,  to  keep  still  in  the 
front  of  things  in  that  new  age,  but  for  many 
the  occupation  which  made  up  the  greater  part 
of  their  life  had  become  an  unpromising,  unin- 
spiring, unenlightened  servitude.  In  this  jubi- 
lee, to-day,  we  are  to  recall  the  ways  in  which 
new  zest  has  been  brought  into  the  depressed 
life  of  the  American  farmer,  the  ways  in  which 
his  farm  has  been  made  part  of  a  new  frontier 
and  he  has  been  made  once  more  a  pioneer. 

At  first  the  improvement  of  our  husbandry 
was  the  work  of  a  few  men,  and  these  were  men 
whose  interest  in  farming  was,  in  large  part,  a 
public  interest.  George  Washington  was  one 
of  the  earliest  and  one  of  the  most  influential 
of  these.  First  in  war  and  first  in  peace,  he  was 
also  the  first  American  farmer  of  his  day.  His 
outlook  over  the  educational  needs  of  the  new 
nation  included  proposals  for  the  establishment 
of  boards  of  agriculture,  a  military  academy, 
and  a  national  university.  Other  statesmen 
with  a  care  for  agriculture  and  other  farmers 
who  were  statesmen  in  their  view,  urged  that 
practical  provision  be  made  for  the  collection 
and  dissemination  of  agricultural  information. 
In  the  opinion  of  these  men  it  was  information 


AGRICULTURAL   EDUCATION  47 

that  was  chiefly  needed  to  insure  the  general 
improvement  of  the  farming  industry  —  informa- 
tion regarding  the  experience  and  experiments 
of  those  who  were  already  most  advanced  in  the 
practice  of  husbandry.  The  new  awakening 
in  European  agriculture  had  great  influence 
among  the  leaders  of  American  agriculture  at 
this  time. 

It  was  while  we  were  still  under  the  Articles 
of  Confederation  that  a  beginning  was  made  in 
the  formation  of  agricultural  societies.  Pennsyl- 
vania and  South  Carolina  had  established  such 
societies  before  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution. 
New  York,  Massachusetts,  and  Connecticut  fol- 
lowed during  Washington's  administration.  The 
publications  of  these  societies  had  begun  to  ap- 
pear before  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  agricultural  fairs  came  into  being  in  the  first 
decades  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Various 
endeavors  to  secure  the  establishment  of  a  na- 
tional board  of  agriculture  had  led,  before  the 
day  that  we  here  celebrate,  to  the  first  seed  dis- 
tributions through  the  national  Patent  Office, 
and  to  the  first  separate  agricultural  appropria- 
tion, in  1854. 

Through  these  several  movements,  supple- 
mented by  a  comparatively  early  development  of 
an  agricultural  periodical  literature,  and  through 
many  later  developments  of  agricultural  organiza- 
tion, the  growth  of  interest  in  the  improvement  of 


48  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

rural  conditions  has  long  been  actively  fostered. 
But  our  attention  to-day  must  be  centered  upon 
the  development  of  organized  agricultural  educa- 
tion, and  to  that  subject  we  will  turn  without  any 
further  delay. 

Let  us  first  note  some  bearings  of  agricultural 
education  which  have  often  been  discussed,  but 
must  be  considered  here  again  in  the  interest  of 
true  educational  perspective.  Historically  it  has 
been  found  extremely  difficult  to  bring  the  sub- 
ject of  agriculture  into  any  manageable  peda- 
gogic form.  The  fact  that  everybody  in  the 
country  knows  something  about  it  is  at  first  a 
hindrance  rather  than  a  help.  It  is  difficult  to 
treat  the  subject  in  such  manner  as  to  avoid  on 
the  one  hand  an  excess  of  platitude,  a  repetition 
of  what  every  one  knows,  or  thinks  he  knows,  and 
on  the  other  hand  an  excess  of  unutilized  natural 
science,  deeply  interesting  in  itself  but  hard  to 
apply  on  the  farm.  Certain  other  subjects,  of 
which  education  itself  is  one,  share  in  this  handi- 
cap. It  is  a  difficulty  met  with  in  European 
schools  of  agriculture,  and  it  had  not  been  over- 
come in  Europe  or  America  when  the  Michigan 
State  Agricultural  College  came  into  being.  The 
most  effective  training  for  manual  occupations 
was  still  some  form  of  apprenticeship,  apart 
from  schools,  while  the  school  had  long  held  the 
foremost  place  in  preparation  for  literary  pur- 
suits. How  to  combine,  in  one  educative  process, 


AGRICULTURAL   EDUCATION  49 

the  advantages  of  the  school  and  the  advantages 
of  the  apprentice  system,  was  the  problem  of 
agricultural  education.  In  one  form  or  another 
it  has  been  the  problem  of  all  our  education  for 
special  occupations  in  the  past  half-century. 

For  the  student  of  educational  history,  then, 
this  problem  of  agricultural  education  appears 
as  one  phase,  and  a  peculiarly  difficult  phase,  of 
the  larger  problem  of  training  for  any  particular 
vocation  in  life.  You  will  not  look  to  me  to  con- 
tribute anything  to  the  special  history  of  this 
institution,  which  others,  here  on  the  ground, 
may  be  expected  to  treat  so  much  more  effectively 
than  I  could  treat  it.  But  my  theme  deals  rather 
with  that  broader  movement  of  which  the  notable 
history  of  this  institution  forms  a  part. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  say  just  where  and  how 
systematic  instruction  in  the  principles  of  agri- 
culture took  its  rise  in  this  country.  Such  instruc- 
tion was  given  in  some  sort  in  Moor's  Indian 
School,  out  of  which  Dartmouth  College  arose, 
back  even  in  colonial  days.  Benjamin  Franklin 
proposed  such  instruction  for  the  academy  at 
Philadelphia,  the  forerunner  of  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania,  but  it  does  not  appear  that  this 
part  of  his  plan  was  realized.  In  the  twenties 
and  thirties  of  the  nineteenth  century  great  in- 
terest was  excited  in  the  so-called  manual  labor 
schools.  It  was  proposed  that  a  farm  be  attached 
to  the  schools,  and  that  those  who  were  studying 

4 


50          GOVERNMENT  BY   INFLUENCE 

during  a  part  of  the  day  should  engage  in  ordi- 
nary farm  labor  during  another  part  of  the  day. 
The  purpose,  to  be  sure,  was  primarily  to  offer 
students  an  opportunity  to  "pay  their  way" 
through  school.  But  there  was  a  thought,  too, 
of  instruction  in  the  better  methods  of  farming, 
and  at  least  a  vague  dream  of  something  better 
yet,  the  vital  union  of  thought  and  manual  toil. 
Some  of  the  old-line  colleges  showed  at  least 
good- will  toward  the  scientific  aspects  of  agricul- 
ture. Columbia  even  established  a  professorship 
under  which  agriculture  was  ranged  alongside  of 
other  sciences.  Then,  just  at  the  middle  of  the 
century,  the  state  of  Michigan  provided  in  its 
constitution  of  1850  for  the  establishment  of  an 
agricultural  school,  and  seven  years  later  this 
institution,  the  first  of  its  kind  and  grade  in  the 
United  States,  was  ready  to  enroll  its  first  stu- 
dents. Pennsylvania  had  already  incorporated 
its  Farmers'  High  School,  but  it  was  preceded  by 
two  years  in  the  actual  opening  by  this  State 
Agricultural  College  of  Michigan.  A  little  later 
in  that  same  notable  year,  1857,  Justin  S. 
Morrill  of  Vermont  first  introduced  in  Congress 
his  measure  for  the  endowment  of  agricultural 
and  mechanical  colleges  in  the  several  states  by 
the  national  government. 

What  is  especially  worthy  of  note  at  this  point 
is  the  fact  that  this  movement,  which  was  pri- 
marily a  movement  of  the  people  or  rather  of  the 


AGRICULTURAL   EDUCATION  51 

leaders  of  the  people,  found  parallel  embodiment 
in  both  state  and  national  legislation.  At  first 
both  the  states  and  the  nation  moved  but  slowly 
and  tentatively.  But  within  a  few  years  large 
beginnings  had  been  made.  In  this  as  in  other 
public  interests,  within  the  broad  limitations  of 
the  national  Constitution,  working  adjustments 
of  state  and  national  agencies  to  each  other  have 
been  made  from  time  to  time,  in  view  of  practical 
needs  rather  than  of  academic  theories. 

The  great,  epoch-making  act  of  this  whole 
movement  was  undoubtedly  the  Morrill  act, 
which  finally  reached  its  passage  when  civil  war 
had  lent  new  power  to  the  spirit  of  nationality  in 
the  national  legislature.  In  signing  this  act,  on 
the  second  day  of  July,  1862,  Abraham  Lincoln, 
that  "new  birth  of  our  new  soil,"  that  surveyor 
of  western  lands,  who  was  to  bring  to  an  end  the 
labor  of  slaves  on  our  American  fields,  took  his 
decisive  part  in  the  effort  to  make  our  American 
tillage  the  work  of  men  made  free  by  knowledge 
and  enlightened  skill. 

By  the  Morrill  act  of  1862,  the  national  gov- 
ernment gave  aid  to  the  states,  in  the  way  of 
liberal  grants  of  lands ;  it  encouraged  the  states 
to  do  in  their  own  several  ways  the  work  of  higher 
education  in  the  domain  of  agriculture  and  the 
mechanic  arts.  While  technical  studies  were 
brought  to  the  front  in  this  act,  it  refused  to  draw 
a  line  of  opposition  between  those  technical  sub- 


52          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

jects  and  the  training  which  makes  for  liberal 
culture.  And  both  technical  and  liberal  training 
were  joined  with  military  instruction,  as  prepara- 
tion for  the  defence  of  the  nation's  life. 

Other  important  acts  soon  followed:  That 
establishing  a  national  department  of  agricul- 
ture, in  1862,  which  department  was  raised  to 
cabinet  rank  in  1889;  and  that  establishing  a 
department  of  education,  in  1867,  which  depart- 
ment was  reduced  to  the  rank  of  a  bureau  in 
1869.  In  their  different  ways  these  two  govern- 
ment offices  have  both  had  to  do  with  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  later  acts  for  agricultural 
education,  and  I  think  I  may  add  that  on  their 
effective  co-operation  depends  the  full  realization 
in  the  future  of  the  high  purposes  for  which 
those  acts  were  passed. 

After  the  Civil  War  the  establishment  of  agri- 
cultural colleges  went  steadily  forward  till  such 
institutions,  aided  by  the  land  grants  of  the  gen- 
eral government,  had  been  erected  in  all  of  the 
states,  with  eventually  sixteen  schools  for  colored 
students  added  in  the  southern  states.  The 
association  of  these  colleges  was  organized,  the 
Hatch  acts  brought  new  aid  from  the  general 
government  for  the  maintenance  of  experiment 
stations,  the  second  Morrill  act  added  its  large 
federal  appropriations  for  the  furtherance  of  the 
ordinary  work  of  the  colleges,  the  summer  grad- 
uate school  was  organized,  the  Adams  act  pro- 


AGRICULTURAL   EDUCATION  53 

vided  for  advanced  research  in  agriculture,  and 
finally  the  Nelson  amendment  to  the  agricultural 
appropriation  bill  of  1907  has  brought  still  larger 
financial  support  to  the  colleges,  together  with 
permissive  provision  for  the  use  of  a  part  of  the 
federal  grant  in  the  training  of  teachers  of  agri- 
culture. It  is  a  record  of  notable  advance,  and 
we  can  hardly  doubt  that  the  great  heart  of 
Washington  would  have  been  glad  to  see  the  re- 
sults that  we  may  see  to-day, 

When  we  attempt  to  interpret  the  course  of  this 
educational  development  and  to  plan  for  further 
advance,  we  need  the  help  of  some  general  con- 
ceptions relating  to  our  social  organization.  For 
it  is  evident  that  agricultural  education  cannot  be 
a  thing  apart  and  alone.  Its  real  and  lasting 
strength  is  to  be  found  in  its  connection  with 
general  education.  And  the  strength  of  general 
education  and  of  all  of  its  special  developments 
is  to  be  found  in  the  connection  of  the  schools 
with  the  real  life  of  our  people. 

Passing  over  all  other  views  of  our  democracy, 
however  essential  and  interesting  they  may  be, 
permit  me  to  call  attention  just  now  to  the  func- 
tion of  those  who  are  called  leaders  in  a  demo- 
cratic society;  for  we  now  commonly  recognize 
the  fact  that  democracy  does  not  dispense  with 
leaders,  but  rather  makes  the  strongest  demand 
for  positive  leadership.  In  such  a  society  it  is  not 
for  one  individual  or  one  class  simply  to  lead 


54          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

while  another  class  simply  follows.  The  true 
leader  in  a  democracy  is  one  who,  while  leading 
in  all  reality,  is  capable  of  learning  from  his  fol- 
lowers. And  the  followers  of  such  a  leader  in  a 
true  democracy  are  not  those  who  follow  because 
they  do  not  think,  but  those  who  follow  because 
they  think  and  are  able  to  recognize  their  leader. 
They  follow  because  they  are  convinced.  So  our 
whole  social  fabric  is  made  up  of  leaders  who 
must  learn  if  they  would  continue  to  lead,  and 
their  peculiarly  restless  and  skittish  constitu- 
encies. Here  as  everywhere  the  relation  of  lead- 
ers to  constituencies  is  permanent  and  essential, 
but  within  that  permanent  relationship  there  is 
continual  interplay  and  shifting  of  parts.  It  is  a 
normal  condition  with  us  that  those  who  have  the 
subordinate  part  should  be  increasingly  intelli- 
gent, critical,  and  ready  to  assume  the  actual 
leadership. 

This  is  the  state  of  things  that  our  system  of 
education  fosters  and  must  continue  to  foster. 
It  must  bring  forth  scientific  experts  who  shall 
be  able  to  teach  the  people  the  principles  under- 
lying the  arts  of  life,  and  it  must  train  up  a  people 
to  make  for  the  expert  an  intelligent  constitu- 
ency, quick  to  seize  on  all  that  he  may  offer  for 
the  betterment  of  their  practice,  and  quick  to 
reject  those  suggestions  that  they  cannot  put  to 
use.  So  our  public  health  rests  upon  the  co- 
operation of  highly  trained  experts  in  medicine 


AGRICULTURAL   EDUCATION  55 

and  sanitation  and  a  people  who  can  act  intelli- 
gently upon  their  directions  and  regulations.  So 
our  public  and  domestic  architecture  is  im- 
proving slowly — very  slowly — through  the  co- 
operation of  architects  who  know  their  art  and 
a  building  people  who  know  their  architects,  and 
who  follow  them  in  part  and  frustrate  them  in 
part.  So,  too,  our  agricultural  education  must 
proceed.  There  must  be  training  of  the  highest 
sort  for  our  agricultural  experts.  More  than  that, 
at  the  topmost  reach  of  our  agricultural  education 
there  must  be  that  which  is  not  commonly  recog- 
nized as  education  at  all,  the  pure  research  of  the 
pure  scientist.  For  no  education  can  continue 
to  be  really  alive  unless  it  draw  directly,  from 
some  source  of  new  and  abounding  knowledge, 
a  fresh  supply,  never  yet  handled  and  made  com- 
mon among  mankind.  It  may  be  very  little  that 
any  year  or  any  age  may  have  to  give  that  is 
altogether  new,  but  that  little  will  sweeten  all 
the  rest. 

Then,  our  system  of  education  must  reach 
down  to  schools  of  the  lowest  grade,  the  little 
country  schools,  in  which  the  capable  constitu- 
ency of  the  great  experts  is  to  be  trained;  and 
there,  too,  some  of  the  future  leaders  are  to  make 
their  first  beginnings.  The  most  of  those  in  such 
schools  are  to  live  by  the  practical  art  of  farming. 
But  in  these  days  they  are  to  have  the  skill  to 
take  the  science  of  the  scientist  and  transform  it 


56  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

into  the  art  of  their  lives.  They  are  to  read 
agricultural  bulletins  and  understand  and  use 
them.  They  are  to  pick  their  way  and  keep  from 
being  mired  in  the  mass  of  such  literature  now 
provided  for  their  reading.  They  are  to  attend 
institutes  and  conventions,  where  they  will  listen 
with  discrimination  to  long  and  learned  papers, 
and  make  short  and  pertinent  speeches  of  their 
own.  They  are  to* find  the  farm  interesting  in  the 
highest  degree,  because  of  new  hopes  of  profitable 
production  which  it  offers  and  because  of  its 
connection  with  the  great  world  of  ideas. 

When  we  grow  more  skillful,  we  shall  make 
elementary  schools  of  a  better-rounded  type,  in 
which  the  book-learning  that  has  long  been  the 
distinctive  province  of  the  school  shall  join  to 
itself  the  best  things  in  the  old  system  of  appren- 
ticeship, and  from  that  combination  shall  arise 
something  better  than  either  one  in  its  lonesome 
isolation.  Already  we  are  beginning  to  make 
institutions  somewhat  of  this  order,  and  it  will  be 
done  much  better  yet  as  time  goes  on. 

This,  then,  is  what  we  may  see  as  the  ideal,  in 
agricultural  education  and  equally  in  education 
of  other  kinds,  and  perhaps  of  every  kind:  A 
system  of  schools  complete  in  its  sequence  from 
the  lowest  to  the  highest,  in  which  the  study  of 
books  is  closely  joined  with  training  for  some  of 
the  practical  arts  of  life;  in  which  all  practical 
training  is  kept  in  vital  touch  with  general  edu- 


AGRICULTURAL   EDUCATION  57 

cation;  in  which  the  ability  to  form  sound  and 
stable  judgments  is  sought  throughout  as  a  thing 
of  great  price ;  in  which  the  higher  schools  send 
into  the  lower  schools  an  unbroken  succession  of 
teachers  who  both  know  the  truth  and  are  able 
to  bring  others  to  a  knowledge  of  the  truth ;  and 
in  which,  finally,  the  stream  of  knowledge  fresh 
and  new,  from  some  department  of  pure  research, 
shall  never  fail  to  keep  fresh  .and  bright  the  old 
wisdom  of  the  ages  gone  before.  Or,  in  more 
concrete  statement,  our  elementary  schools  and 
high  schools  in  country  communities  are  still  to 
be  primarily  schools  of  general  education,  but 
with  much  more  of  training  in  the  arts  of  the 
farm,  and  the  sciences  lying  near  to  those  arts; 
our  state  colleges  of  agriculture  and  mechanic 
arts  are  to  prepare  young  men  and  young  women 
to  read  intelligently  the  literature  of  scientific 
agriculture,  to  form  independent  judgments  in 
agricultural  matters,  and  to  bring  their  new 
knowledge  into  connection  with  the  real  work  of 
the  farm;  these  state  colleges,  moreover,  are  to 
provide  well-trained  teachers  of  agriculture  and 
related  subjects  for  the  elementary  and  secon- 
dary schools;  the  colleges  of  agriculture,  still 
further,  are  to  be  co-operative  educational  in- 
stitutions and  not  merely  special  and  local  insti- 
tutions —  they  are  to  co-operate  with  similar 
institutions  in  other  states,  in  order  that  the  work 
of  one  may  be  strengthened  by  the  work  of  all, 


58  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

and  co-operate  with  the  universities  of  their  sev- 
eral states  for  the  innumerable  advantages  to 
both  which  may  come  from  such  united  effort. 
The  national  Department  of  Agriculture  is  un- 
doubtedly to  continue  its  remarkably  wide  and 
influential  work,  its  expert  investigations,  the  is- 
suance of  its  manifold  and  vastly  useful  publi- 
cations, and  its  furtherance  of  all  manner  of 
agricultural  education  and  research  in  the  sev- 
eral states.  Finally,  the  Bureau  of  Education  is 
to  do  as  thoroughly  as  possible  the  part  of  this 
work  assigned  to  it.  I  venture  the  hope  that  with 
enlarged  resources  it  may  do  more  than  it  is  now 
expected  to  do,  and  all  without  trespassing  on 
the  proper  field  of  other  institutions. 

Let  me  speak  a  little  more  particularly  of  the 
part  of  this  program  which  falls  to  the  education 
office  of  the  general  government.  It  can  do  its 
best  work,  I  think,  as  a  co-ordinating  influence. 
It  can  bring  to  the  notice  of  the  less  favored  in- 
stitutions information  concerning  the  experience 
of  more  advanced  institutions.  It  can  call  atten- 
tion from  time  to  time  to  the  relation  of  agricul- 
tural education  to  general  education.  It  can 
survey  the  educational  field  and  possibly  point 
out  dangers  to  be  averted  or  weak  places  to  be 
strengthened.  It  can,  finally,  discover  things 
that  need  the  doing  and  are  not  attended  to  by 
any  other  agency,  and  can  see  that  some  part  of 
such  lack  is  supplied.  So  much  as  this  I  hope  the 


AGRICULTURAL   EDUCATION  59 

Bureau  of  Education  may  be  able  to  do  for  our 
agricultural  education.  And  so  much  as  this  I 
may  say  it  will  undertake  to  do  as  far  as  its  re- 
sources will  permit. 

In  conclusion,  the  view  cannot  be  too  strongly 
stressed  that  all  of  this  agricultural  education  is  a 
contribution  to  the  general  education  of  the 
American  people  and  to  the  betterment  of  Ameri- 
can life.  You  who  celebrate  the  fiftieth  anniver- 
sary of  this  institution  realize,  as  the  history  of 
this  college  has  shown,  that  it  is  not  simply  larger 
crops  and  better  breeds  of  stock  and  a  more 
profitable  output  of  farm  manufacture  for  which 
you  are  laboring ;  but  through  these  means  and 
through  all  other  interests  of  the  modern  farm 
you  are  working  for  the  improvement  of  Ameri- 
can citizenship,  and  that  with  special  reference  to 
the  needs  of  this  great  state  of  Michigan.  May 
you  long  continue  to  serve  the  Commonwealth 
and  the  larger  Republic  as  faithfully  and  as  suc- 
cessfully as  you  now  serve  them.  And  may  every 
good  cause  in  this  land  feel  the  reinforcement  of  a 
wholesome  and  vigorous  life  in  the  homes  of  our 
country  communities,  which  have  been  made 
more  prosperous  homes  and  better  homes  because 
of  the  work  that  you  are  doing  here. 


IV 

SOME  RELATIONS  OF  RELIGIOUS 

EDUCATION  AND  SECULAR 

EDUCATION 

Read  at  the  Conference  of  the  Religious  Education  Associa- 
tion at  Los  Angeles,  California,  July  10,  1907.  Pub- 
lished in  Religious  Education,  October,  1907. 


IV 


SOME  RELATIONS  OF  RELIGIOUS  EDUCATION 
AND  SECULAR  EDUCATION 

KSLIGIOUS     education     cannot     perma- 
nently employ  methods  which  are  out  of 
harmony  with  the  methods   of    secular 
education.     Those  methods  may  differ  with  the 
different  subjects  to  which  they  are  applied,  but 
they  cannot  permanently  contradict  each  other. 
The   one   will   gradually   assimilate    the   other. 
And  the  one  that  will  assimilate  the  other,  in  any 
age,  is  the  one  that  in  that  age  has  the  wider 
hold  on  the  convictions  of  men. 

The  relation  of  these  two,  each  to  each,  varies 
and  must  vary  from  age  to  age.  In  the  mediaeval 
period  it  was  institutional  religion  that  exercised 
the  wider  sway,  and  secular  education,  if  such  it 
could  be  called,  departed  only  occasionally  or 
furtively  from  the  ways  of  religious  education. 
Now  it  is  natural  science  that  commands  the 
more  nearly  unanimous  assent  of  mankind. 
Science  represents  the  united  thought  of  our 
modern  world,  and  modern  education  is  allied 
with  modern  science.  It  is  this  type  of  education 


64  GOVERNMENT  BY   INFLUENCE 

that  is  dominant  to-day,  and  we  may  confidently 
expect  that  in  this  age  it  will  in  large  measure 
assimilate  religious  education  to  its  standards 
and  its  processes. 

The  march  of  education,  having  this  scientific 
and  secular  character,  is  one  of  the  mightiest 
spectacles  of  our  modern  world.  It  is  the  central 
and  unifying  fact  of  modern  civilization.  The 
religion  of  this  age  is  cleft  by  innumerable  differ- 
ences of  faith  and  polity;  that  is,  for  the  time 
being,  it  is  normally  and  necessarily  sectarian. 
There  are  seeming  exceptions,  but  they  will  not 
disprove  the  rule.  The  science  of  this  age  is  the 
same  science  all  over  the  world.  And  modern 
education,  overpassing  partisan  and  sectarian 
bounds,  overpassing  even  local,  national,  and 
racial  bounds,  is  fast  coming  to  be  in  its  main 
features  the  same  throughout  the  world,  and  to 
constitute  one  dominant,  world-wide,  human  in- 
terest. Der  Glaube  trennt  die  Volker,  die  Wissen- 
schaft  vereinigt  sie. 

We  cannot  doubt  that  this  age  of  sectarianism 
has  a  part  of  its  own  to  play  in  the  religious  his- 
tory of  the  nations.  If  it  is  a  peculiarly  unstable 
and  transitional  stage  in  the  life  of  the  church, 
it  may  be  no  less  important  to  the  rounding  out 
of  that  life  into  its  fulness  than  any  other  stage 
through  which  the  church  has  passed.  But  so 
long  as  religion  is  predominantly  sectarian,  it 
may  not  expect  to  regain  its  ascendency  over 


RELIGIOUS   AND   SECULAR   EDUCATION     65 

the  institutions  and  the  methods  of  education. 
Universal  education  gravitates  toward  universal 
knowledge  and  toward  universally  recognized 
forms  of  thought.  The  partial  and  unprevailing 
view  of  any  party  or  sect  is  not  at  home  in  public 
schools,  even  though  it  be  a  view  which  shall 
eventually  lead  the  world.  Religion  in  its  mod- 
ern relations,  sectarian  religion,  is  a  breeder  of 
disturbance  in  those  national  systems  of  educa- 
tion in  which  it  now  holds  a  place  in  accordance 
with  a  tradition  all  unconsciously  outgrown. 
Disturbance  is  often  wholesome,  but  not  disturb- 
ance of  this  kind ;  for  it  is  full  of  bitterness,  and 
often  it  appeals  to  simple  prejudice.  Such  dis- 
turbance doubtless  will  continue,  working  some 
little  good  and  any  amount  of  harm,  till  the 
tradition  which  sustained  the  official  teaching  of 
religion  among  those  peoples  shall  be  cast  aside. 
Where  the  tradition  has  already  passed  away  or 
where  it  has  never  become  established,  the  teach- 
ing of  any  system  of  religious  doctrine  is  to 
be  steadily  excluded  from  public  and  common 
schools.  Formal  instruction  in  religion  will  be 
out  of  place  in  public  schools  wherever  and  so 
long  as  religion  is  sectarian,  wherever  and  so 
long  as  the  method  of  religious  teaching  is 
greatly  at  variance  with  the  methods  of  secular 
education. 

And  will  the  time  ever  come  when  these  limi- 
tations  will    no   longer   prevail?     I    am   not   a 

5 


66  GOVERNMENT   BY  INFLUENCE 

prophet,  but  I  have  no  doubt  that  such  a  time 
will  come  —  not  in  our  day,  but  in  the  course 
of  generations  or  of  centuries.  The  topmost 
crest  of  the  sectarian  wave  in  our  religious  history 
would  seem  already  to  be  past.  It  is  a  wave 
centuries  long  and  it  may  be  ages  long,  but  it  is 
a  receding  wave.  Men  still  emphasize  their 
religious  differences ;  but  already  there  is  notable 
gain  in  the  emphasis  of  religious  agreement.  It 
is  a  change  that  points  toward  a  day  when  secta- 
rian distinctions  shall  be  decisively  subordinated 
to  religious  affirmations  as  wide  as  undegenerate 
mankind.  The  differences  will  not  disappear, 
and  agreement  will  not  be  attained  by  the  mere 
cancellation  of  differences.  But  the  differences 
w7ill,  I  think,  become  subordinate  and  tributary. 
And,  by  ways  that  none  but  a  prophet  can  fore- 
see, by  revivals  of  religious  thought  and  power 
such  as  the  world  has  not  yet  known,  the  spirit 
of  man  will  come  to  new  convictions  of  religious 
verity,  and  they  will  be  wider  and  deeper  than 
the  unities  of  the  past. 

We  cannot  doubt  it,  for  we  believe  that  religion 
as  well  as  science  stands  for  a  permanent  need 
of  the  human  soul,  and  stands  in  truth  for  the 
supreme  need  of  the  human  soul.  As  long  as 
our  temporal  incompleteness  brings  its  manifold 
strain  upon  the  life  within  us,  so  long  we  shall 
find  ourselves  stricken  with  need  of  some  eternal 
perfectness.  And  the  religion  which  answers 


RELIGIOUS  AND   SECULAR  EDUCATION     67 

to  this  need  will  be  either  the  conscious  and 
dominant  interest  of  our  lives  or  the  large  back- 
ground of  our  lives;  unless  it  be  indeed  in 
occasional  conditions  of  disease,  sporadic  or 
epidemic,  where  for  a  time  the  sense  for  religion 
may  seem  to  be  altogether  lost  —  yet  only  for  a 
time. 

But  in  education  and  religion,  as  in  all  things 
else,  no  age  is  final  and  complete.  Every  age 
must  do  its  part  in  preparation  for  the  next,  it 
must  contribute  its  part  to  the  whole  of  human 
history.  Yet,  if  the  conditions  of  this  age  are 
not  permanent,  they  are  permanent  and  impera- 
tive for  this  age.  Let  us  now  look  a  little  further 
into  present-day  relations  of  education  and  re- 
ligion, viewing  them  as  a  stage  in  the  long-con- 
tinued development  of  such  relations  —  a  process 
that  has  run  through  ages  that  have  been  and 
must  run  through  the  ages  to  come  —  yet  as 
having  a  certain  immediate  finality  for  the  times 
in  which  we  live. 

So  far  as  modern  education  is  concerned,  we 
see  that  it  is  allied  not  only  with  modern  science 
but  with  democracy.  Even  in  monarchical  lands 
this  is  true,  in  subtle  ways  that  are  very  wide 
in  their  reach.  In  our  own  land  the  alliance 
between  education  and  democracy  is  open  and 
absolute.  Our  secular  education,  as  both  demo- 
cratic and  scientific,  finds  its  greatest  elevation, 
it  makes  its  warmest  claim  to  the  devotion  of 


68  GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

men,  on  the  moral  plane.  Democratic  education 
seeks  the  good  of  every  man  because  he  is  man, 
and  so  reaches  its  high  moral  conception  of 
social  service.  Scientific  education  teaches  men 
to  follow  truth  for  the  sake  of  truth,  in  the  full 
conviction  that  human  interests  and  clear  truth 
must  in  the  end  be  one.  In  its  pure  devotion  to 
truth,  natural  science  is  moral,  unswervingly 
moral.  The  best  that  education  draws  from  the 
scientific  alliance  is  not  even  the  perfected  method 
which  science  has  to  teach,  but  its  moral  eleva- 
tion, its  power  to  awaken  a  new  devotion  to  truth. 
In  loyalty  to  truth  and  in  disinterested  social 
service  our  public  education  rises  to  the  summit 
of  its  power. 

What,  then,  is  the  character  of  religion,  in  this 
age  of  sectarianism,  which  may  call  for  special 
consideration  at  this  point  ? 

Religion  is  not  only  a  permanent  human  fact, 
but  certain  of  its  aspects  and  elements  can  be 
distinguished  as  likewise  abiding  through  his- 
toric change.  Consider  the  aspects  of  doctrine, 
of  ritual,  of  institutional  organization,  and  of 
ethical  spirit,  not  to  mention  others  at  this  time. 
The  student  of  ecclesiastical  history  knows  how 
indissolubly  these  are  bound  together;  but  he 
knows  also  that  in  the  history  of  the  Christian 
church  now  one  and  now  another  has  held  the 
dominant  place.  Such  shifting  from  age  to  age 
of  the  center  of  gravity  of  religion  is  of  the  deep- 


RELIGIOUS   AND   SECULAR   EDUCATION     69 

est  significance  in  the  history  of  the  higher  life 
of  mankind. 

In  the  religious  thought  of  these  present  times 
we  see  a  turning  away  from  the  doctrinal  and 
the  ecclesiastical  elements  that  laid  a  strong  hold 
on  the  minds  of  men  in  other  days.  Within  the 
church  the  interest  in  these  things  is  languid  as 
compared  with  that  of  an  earlier  age.  And  we 
cannot  forget  that  a  great  part  of  the  religious 
aspiration  and  emotion  of  our  day  arises  outside 
of  the  church.  It  will  not  be  contained  in  the 
old  dogmatic  and  institutional  forms.  It  has 
not  made  new  forms  for  itself,  and,  in  truth,  it 
does  not  much  care  to  make  new  forms.  Yet 
that  is  not  to  deny  to  it  altogether  the  religious 
character.  It  is  an  overflow  religion.  For  the 
most  part  it  may  be  recognized  as  an  overflow 
Christianity. 

Now,  if  there  are  no  institutional  forms  and  no 
systematic  theology  that  have  succeeded  in  gath- 
ering up  and  unifying  this  overflow  of  religion, 
it  does,  in  fact,  find  some  internal  unification, 
which  makes  of  it  one  tendency  and  not  many 
unrelated  tendencies.  And  that  unifying  prin- 
ciple is  humanitarian  and  ethical. 

Even  in  the  church,  and  particularly  in  the 
Protestant  churches,  it  would  seem  that  the 
turning  away  from  those  earlier  centers  of  reli- 
gious conviction,  the  system  of  doctrine  and  ec- 
clesiastical polity,  were  to  work  out  as  a  definite 


70  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

turning  to  a  center  of  moral  conviction.  But 
not  moral  as  touching  mere  practice  according 
to  customary  standards.  It  is  rather  the  moral 
as  essential  righteousness  with  which  we  are 
here  concerned.  And  again,  not  righteousness  as 
a  term  in  a  system  of  theology,  but  righteousness 
as  apprehended  by  the  large  human  sense  which 
values  the  right  above  the  wrong,  and  that 
overwhelmingly. 

Already  the  signs  of  such  new  centering  of 
religion  clearly  appear.  For  many  in  this  present 
age,  religion  is  reached  by  way  of  the  moral 
sense,  rather  than  morals  by  the  way  of  religion. 
It  is  not  that  the  historic  authority,  the  miracles, 
the  incense  of  religion,  bring  men  to  religious 
convictions,  which  thereafter  are  the  ground  of 
all  of  their  moral  convictions;  but  it  is  rather 
that  through  the  moral  sense,  through  hunger 
after  righteousness,  they  find  a  moral  universe 
in  which  the  all-righteous  God  is  their  Father. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  this  new  cen- 
tering of  the  religious  life  is  the  ultimate  term  of 
our  religious  development,  any  more  than  those 
earlier  centerings  have  been.  It  has  its  dangers 
and  inadequacies,  as  they  had.  Other  centers, 
perhaps  those  that  the  past  has  known,  but  in 
new  form  and  heightened  power,  must  send 
forth  a  corrective  influence  in  their  turn  when 
this  age  has  done  its  work.  But  this  age,  I  think, 
must  work  out  its  religious  advance,  a  great  and 


RELIGIOUS   AND   SECULAR   EDUCATION     71 

true  advance  from  the  point  at  which  it  began, 
by  realizing  the  full  meaning  of  those  moral  con- 
ceptions which  have  taken  strong  hold  upon  it. 

We  have  come  now  to  a  point  where  it  will 
appear  that,  for  the  sake  of  religion  itself  — 
in  order  that  religion  may  do  its  proper  work 
-  education  must  be  true  to  its  proper  character 
for  the  age  that  it  serves.  The  most  vital  meet- 
ing place  for  education  and  religion  in  this  age  is 
on  the  moral  plane.  Through  its  new  emphasis 
on  moral  conceptions,  education  itself,  secular 
education  if  you  would  call  it  such,  may  help 
religion  to  work  its  way  through  and  overcome 
its  present-day  sectarianism.  Education  will  be 
the  best  ally  of  religion  in  this  age  if  it  hold  true 
to  its  alliance  with  science  and  democracy. 

Observe  how  vitally  the  several  lines  converge. 
Democracy  stands  for  the  brotherhood  of  man. 
Religion  bases  that  brotherhood  on  what  is 
ultimately  a  more  cohesive  and  organic  concep- 
tion, the  Fatherhood  of  God.  But  where  an 
earlier  age  found  the  brotherhood  of  man  through 
the  fatherhood  of  God,  this  age  seems  destined 
to  find  the  fatherhood  of  God  through  the  broth- 
erhood of  man.  Pure  devotion  to  truth  is  found 
in  both  religion  and  science.  Historically,  the 
religious  sense  for  truth  appears  as  a  very  differ- 
ent thing  from  the  scientific  sense  for  truth. 
They  seem,  indeed,  to  antagonize  and  cancel 
each  other.  Yet  farther  down  they  are  at  one. 


72  GOVERNMENT  BY   INFLUENCE 

And  from  that  farther  depth,  below  the  roots  of 
the  everlasting  hills,  their  unity  must  arise  into 
the  day  of  human  history. 

If  this  be  a  true  reading  of  the  signs,  the  same 
moral  conceptions  are  coming  to  be  the  upper- 
most convictions  in  science,  in  democracy,  and 
in  religion.  It  may  not  be  too  much  to  expect 
that  this  unity  shall  some  day  come  to  full  reali- 
zation, and  may  we  not  then  find  that  diverse 
religions  have  come  to  unity  among  themselves 
in  this  very  process  of  coming  into  accord  with 
democracy  and  science  on  the  high  ground  of 
moral  conviction?  I  am  very  sure  that  this  will 
not  be  all ;  but  I  think  this  may  be  a  part  of  the 
way  by  which  religion  and  education  shall  do 
their  work  together  for  this  age,  and  for  the  ages 
that  are  to  follow. 

For  the  present,  then,  we  may  be  content  to  see 
a  large  part  of  mankind  making  their  way,  even 
unconsciously,  toward  a  genuine  religious  faith 
through  their  moral  aspirations  and  endeavors; 
while  we  still  hold  to  that  ultimate  creed  that  our 
moral  life  will  never  come  to  its  best  until  its 
deepest  convictions  are  joined  with  hopes  and 
affections  and  beliefs  touching  some  larger  and 
more  enduring  life,  the  true  and  eternal  life  of 
the  Spirit. 

Finally,  the  relationships  of  modern  education 
are  to  be  widened.  A  too  absorbing  alliance 
with  natural  science  is  to  be  avoided,  even  if 


RELIGIOUS   AND   SECULAR  EDUCATION    73 

modified  by  the  alliance  with  democracy.  A 
closer  alliance  with  modern  art  is  to  be  culti- 
vated. At  an  earlier  period,  education  suffered 
from  a  too  absorbing  association  with  art,  par- 
ticularly with  literary  art.  Now  new  relations 
with  the  arts  are  desirable,  to  correct  the 
dangers  of  the  scientific  alliance,  in  its  more 
extreme  manifestations. 

And  art,  too,  has  moral  implications  which 
are  ineradicable.  Its  narrowest  devotees  can- 
not isolate  it  altogether  from  the  rest  of  life. 
While  warring  against  a  too  narrow  devotion  to 
natural  science,  it  meets  both  science  and  reli- 
gion on  the  moral  plane,  and  in  some  degree  it 
mediates  their  differences.  It  recognizes  values 
as  well  as  facts ;  it  prizes  instinct  and  the  mass 
play  of  human  emotion  as  well  as  analysis  and 
geometric  law ;  and  —  chiefly  this  —  it  has  can- 
ons which  represent  the  matured  experience,  the 
chastened  pang  and  rapture,  of  the  race,  and 
are  not  to  be  disclosed  or  verified  in  any 
moment  of  time  by  any  individual  fragment 
of  the  race. 

When  modern  education  has  fully  entered 
into  this  threefold  alliance  with  natural  science, 
democracy,  and  art,  its  newer,  safer,  and  more 
fruitful  alliance  with  religion  will,  we  doubt  not, 
be  near  at  hand  and  even  at  the  door. 


V 
THE   CULTURE   OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS 

An  Address  delivered  at  V underbill  University,  June  15, 
1909.  Published  in  the  Methodist  Review,  September, 
1909. 


V 
THE   CULTURE   OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS 

THE  subject  upon  which  I  am  to  speak 
is  either  one  of  the  dullest  or  one  of  the 
most  interesting  in  all  the  world.  That 
depends  upon  the  point  of  view  of  the  listener 
and  upon  the  speaker's  own  interest  in  what 
he  has  to  say.  As  everybody  knows,  the  talk 
about  morals  which  may  be  designated  as  mor- 
alizing is  prosaic  and  platitudinous  to  the  last 
degree.  This  is  a  fact  of  common  knowledge, 
and  it  sometimes  obscures  our  appreciation  of 
another  fact,  namely,  that  there  is  no  set  of  ques- 
tions about  which  men  to-day  speak  with  greater 
warmth  than  questions  of  right  and  wrong.  In 
the  social  circle,  at  the  club,  in  our  public  jour- 
nals, to  say  nothing  of  courts  of  justice  and 
schools  and  churches,  the  thoughts  and  emotions 
of  men  are  most  deeply  stirred  when  discus- 
sion reaches  some  vital  question  of  wrong  and 
righteousness. 

There  is  substance  in  questions  such  as  these. 
They  are  daily  food  for  men  and  women   of 


78  GOVERNMENT  BY   INFLUENCE 

force  and  character  and  influence.  An  ancient 
writer  told  of  the  blessedness  of  the  man  whose 
delight  is  in  the  law  of  the  Lord,  and  added  that 
"in  His  law  doth  he  meditate  day  and  night." 
A  fine  picture  is  this  of  the  man  who  draws  his 
strength  from  familiar  converse  with  high  and 
moral  themes.  "My  son,"  another  wise  man 
said,  "if  thou  .  .  .  incline  thine  ear  unto  wis- 
dom .  .  .  then  shalt  thou  understand  the  fear 
of  the  Lord,  .  .  .  then  shalt  thou  understand 
righteousness  and  judgment  and  equity." 

So,  even  at  the  risk  of  missing  my  aim  and 
being  platitudinous  and  moralizing  after  all,  I 
purpose  speaking  directly  to  the  subject  of 
morals  to-night  —  to  this  most  inviting  subject 
of  private  and  public  righteousness.  The  theme 
is  peculiarly  inviting  when  one  is  face  to  face 
with  a  class  of  university  students,  for  the  finest 
personal  gains  from  a  university  course  are 
found  in  the  heightening  of  one's  ability  to  deal 
with  the  highest  questions  of  all,  which  in  large 
measure  must  always  be  questions  of  the  ethical 
realm;  and  a  university  graduate,  always  a 
public  beneficiary  and  therefore  a  debtor  to  his 
community  and  state  and  nation,  is  expected  to 
render  public  service  in  the  furtherance  of  public 
morality. 

The  very  bigness  of  the  theme,  however, 
renders  it  obviously  impossible  to  discuss  it  in 
this  hour  in  any  systematic  or  comprehensive 


THE   CULTURE   OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS      79 

way.  I  am  sure  you  would  be  appalled  and 
wearied  from  the  beginning  if  the  speaker  were 
to  attempt  such  a  task.  He  is  the  more  free, 
accordingly,  to  exercise  a  certain  caprice.  He 
may  select  a  few  topics  here  and  there  without 
much  order  or  rationality,  merely  because  he 
would  like  to  say  something  about  them,  and 
when  he  is  through  with  these,  he  may  come  to 
an  end.  With  all  deference,  then,  to  those  heroic 
listeners  who  would  prefer  a  discussion  some 
hours  in  length  with  logical  heads  and  sub- 
heads and  a  rhetorical  beginning  and  end,  I 
beg  you  to  let  me  follow  this  simpler  and  less 
exacting  way. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  let  us  think  of  the 
moral  life  as  a  process  of  growing  better.  In 
this  view  we  may  indeed  be  not  far  from  the 
essential  character  of  all  true  morality.  A  tree 
that  does  not  grow  does  not  live,  and  a  stationary 
goodness  is  hardly  a  possibility.  We  may  go  a 
step  further  and  say  that  no  man  can  be  good 
except  by  being  better  than  he  is  by  nature. 
But  this  putting  of  the  case  amounts  to  pretty 
much  the  same  thing  as  the  other;  for  any  sort 
of  excellence  once  achieved  soon  becomes  habit 
and  second  nature,  and  the  only  way  one  can 
then  continue  to  be  good  is  to  go  on  outgrowing 
the  virtue  which  he  has  already  accomplished. 
Among  the  most  hopeless  characters  in  human 
society  is  a  good  man  who  does  not  change, 


80  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

whose  virtues  are  wrought  out  to  a  finish  like 
the  features  of  a  marble  statue,  a  man  who 
nevermore  will  strive  and  sweat  and  resist 
temptation  even  unto  blood.  We  may  say  the 
same  of  communities.  A  highly  moral  and  irre- 
proachable society  may,  after  all,  be  immoral 
in  its  stationary  complacency.  There  is  better 
hope  for  genuine  righteousness  in  a  changing 
order  which  is  striving  after  improvement.  It 
may  run  great  risk  of  moral  loss  for  the  sake  of 
the  greater  moral  gain.  There  is  hope  for  such 
a  community  in  that  its  virtues  are  not  to  be 
kept  under  glass  but  rather  to  be  worked  out 
and  lived  through  and  then  discarded  for  some- 
thing better. 

Then,  there  are  two  sides  of  morality  which 
we  should  consider,  the  side  of  wisdom  and  the 
side  of  companionship.  One-half  of  genuine 
morality  is  ideas.  This  fact  is  not  to  be  forgotten, 
particularly  when  we  are  under  the  stress  of 
intense  convictions  or  of  emotional  appeals  from 
without.  One  good  half  of  all  morality  is  wis- 
dom, and  therefore  it  is  the  duty  of  every  man 
to  be  wise.  I  have  just  been  reading  over  again 
the  Imperial  Rescript  on  education  which  is  the 
basis  of  moral  instruction  in  the  schools  of  Japan, 
and  I  am  struck  by  the  fact  that  among  the  stand- 
ards of  virtue  which  it  sets  up,  along  with  the 
exhortation  to  "be  filial  to  your  parents,  affec- 
tionate to  your  brothers  and  sisters,"  and  "bear 


THE   CULTURE   OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS     81 

yourselves  in  modesty  and  moderation,"  is  this 
further  exhortation  to  "pursue  learning  and  cul- 
tivate arts,  and  thereby  develop  intellectual 
faculties  and  perfect  moral  powers."  In  many 
ways  our  American  standards  are  different  and 
must  be  different  from  those  of  the  Japanese, 
but  we  need  no  less  than  they  to  inculcate  as  a 
moral  duty  the  obligation  to  follow  after  knowl- 
edge. Our  righteousness  will  be  a  low  and  un- 
stable value,  it  will  fail  us  in  our  time  of  need, 
unless  it  be  grounded  in  our  most  coherent 
thought  as  well  as  in  our  impulses  and  our 
sentiments. 

There  are  two  ways  in  which  the  strain  comes 
at  its  worst  in  our  moral  life.  One  is  the  sudden 
and  unexpected  test,  the  perplexity  or  tempta- 
tion which  arises  without  warning  and  must  be 
met  on  the  instant.  The  other  is  the  long-con- 
tinued stress  of  untoward  circumstance  which 
wearies  out  the  patience  and  brings  an  emotional 
tension  to  its  highest  pitch.  In  both  of  these 
cases  the  steadying  power  of  thought  is  most 
sorely  needed.  In  both  of  them  our  thinking  in 
the  time  of  need  must  be  largely  determined  by 
the  thinking  we  may  have  done  before  the  need 
arose.  We  cannot  school  ourselves  to  right  think- 
ing in  the  very  hour  of  emergency.  The  schooling 
must  have  gone  before.  The  emergency  is  the 
test,  the  final  examination  that  tries  its  quality. 
From  this  point  of  view  the  deliberate  training 


82  GOVERNMENT  BY   INFLUENCE 

of  our  schools  and  colleges  comes  to  a  higher 
dignity.  It  is,  all  the  time,  preparing  for  some 
far-off  emergency.  It  is  preparing  for  the  exer- 
cise of  judgment  in  some  crisis,  when  passion 
shall  claim  absolute  control. 

I  have  had  other  occasion  to  make  note  of  the 
close  connection  between  the  judicial  spirit  and 
the  scientific  spirit.  To  cultivate  the  scientific 
spirit  in  the  schools  is  to  prepare  for  the  exercise 
of  the  judicial  spirit  in  the  affairs  of  life.  In  both 
we  have  an  example  of  the  value  of  impersonality. 

There  is  an  aspect  of  human  life  in  which  we 
must  shake  ourselves  free  from  personal  con- 
siderations and  look  upon  things  objectively  and 
impartially.  We  shall  never  get  the  highest  good 
out  of  personality  until  we  have  given  fair  play 
to  this  impersonality.  The  judge  on  the  bench 
and  the  scientist  in  the  laboratory  are  not  to 
be  swerved  by  immediate  personal  preferences. 
They  are  seeking  the  truth  which  shall  stand  the 
test  of  all  time  and  circumstance,  and  which  shall 
therefore  serve  the  personal  needs  of  the  world 
and  not  the  personal  whims  of  the  passing  hour. 
So  our  education,  wrhich  shakes  us  free  for  the 
time  from  a  thousand  little  desires,  partialities, 
and  preferences,  from  prejudice  and  partisan- 
ship, is  building  up  within  us  that  judicial  spirit 
for  which  we  shall  find  sore  need  when  we  meet 
the  instant  issues  of  life. 

But  if  such  wisdom   makes  one  half  of  our 


THE   CULTURE   OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS     83 

moral  life,  it  is  personality  that  makes  the  other 
half,  the  warmer  and  more  exhilarating  half.  It 
is  a  part  of  man's  duty  to  be  wise,  it  is  also  a  part 
of  his  duty  to  be  companionable.  One  of  the 
brightest  of  our  bright  men  has  said,  "Be  good 
and  you  will  be  lonesome."  It  would  not  be  so 
bright  but  rather  more  true  to  say,  "If  you  don't 
get  over  being  lonesome,  you  can't  be  more  than 
half  good."  Our  ideal  of  public  and  private 
virtue  is  not  the  ideal  of  the  isolated  moralist,  who 
would  simply  instruct  his  fellows  and  make  of 
the  community  his  personally  directed  kinder- 
garten. It  is  rather  the  ideal  of  the  man  who 
joins  warm  hands  with  his  fellow  men  to  go  for- 
ward with  them  in  a  common  cause. 

It  is  not  easy  at  this  point  to  say  exactly  the 
right  thing  and  neither  more  nor  less.  How  shall 
a  man  keep  step  with  his  fellows  and  yet  lead  them 
to  better  things  ?  How  shall  he  lead  them  unless 
he  be  a  part  of  their  life,  a  partisan  with  them,  a 
sectarian  with  them,  a  partner  of  their  loves  and 
hates,  whose  aspirations  are  their  own  ?  It  seems 
an  insoluble  problem,  and  yet  it  is  the  problem 
that  the  moral  leaders  of  our  race  have  solved. 
Macaulay  said  of  Peter  the  Great  that  he  civil- 
ized his  people  and  was  himself  a  barbarian.  A 
moral  leader  of  to-day  will  lead  his  people  with- 
out leaving  his  place  in  their  ranks. 

There  are  some  who  will  tell  you  that  you  can- 
not lead  others  in  the  way  of  improvement  if  you 


84  GOVERNMENT    BY   INFLUENCE 

are  too  much  better  than  they,  that  you  must 
have  some  of  their  vices  if  you  would  lead  them 
into  virtue.  And  this  doctrine  easily  runs  to  the 
extreme  in  which  the  would-be  leader  cannot  be 
distinguished  by  any  loftiness  of  his  ideals  from 
those  whom  he  would  lead ;  and  one  short  step 
beyond  this,  the  leader  falls  below  the  level  of 
his  followers  and  becomes  indeed  a  hindrance  to 
their  progress.  It  is  hard  enough  to  decide  in  any 
particular  case,  and  it  is  the  particular  cases  that 
count.  I  do  not  think  that  any  man  ever  finds  it 
necessary  to  be  less  moral  in  order  that  he  may 
help  his  fellow  men  to  be  more  moral;  but  the 
truth  that  there  is  in  this  compromising  view  is 
the  truth  that  his  companionship  makes  up  a 
large  part  of  a  man's  moral  life.  Under  ordinary 
social  conditions  an  austere  separatist  not  only 
forfeits  the  greater  part  of  his  influence  through 
his  separatism :  he  forfeits  thereby  a  great  part  of 
his  own  moral  life,  not  only  in  the  lower  moralities 
but  in  the  higher  moralities  as  well.  The  com- 
pany that  a  man  keeps  is  and  must  always  be  a 
great  part  of  himself. 

What  I  have  said  thus  far  comes  to  this,  that  the 
moral  life  is  found  at  its  best  only  where  there  is 
found  a  well-balanced  growth  in  righteousness. 
Now,  there  is  another  way  of  looking  at  the  round- 
ing out  and  balancing  of  the  moral  character,  con- 
cerning which  something  may  be  said.  Taking 
account  once  more  of  both  the  individual  and  the 


THE   CULTURE   OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS      85 

community,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  cultivation  of 
special  virtues,  what  of  the  prosecution  of  special 
reforms  ? 

A  man  makes  it  his  particular  business  to  rise 
early  in  the  morning,  to  be  benevolent,  to  wage 
war  on  gambling  or  profanity.  A  woman  under- 
takes to  tell  the  literal  truth  in  all  her  social  in- 
tercourse. A  community  organizes  a  campaign 
against  drunkenness  or  municipal  corruption. 

It  is  obvious  enough  that  the  special  undertak- 
ing distorts  the  perspective  of  our  moral  world. 
The  campaigner  in  the  one  Cause  not  only  makes 
himself  a  thorn  and  a  weariness  to  those  who  are 
not  enlisted  in  the  same  campaign :  he  inevitably 
exaggerates  that  aspect  of  righteousness  to  which 
his  attention  is  devoted,  and  so  far  forth  he  ren- 
ders it  more  difficult  for  the  world  to  understand 
the  main  significance  and  worth  of  righteousness. 
He  glorifies  reform  and  thereby  discounts  some- 
thing better  than  reform,  the  practice  of  building 
right,  from  the  ground  up,  on  the  lines  of  a  well- 
wrought  plan.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  he  lays 
his  emphasis  upon  some  negation,  and  so  gives 
greater  currency  to  that  word  of  universal  paraly- 
sis —  Don't.  What  shall  we  say  to  things  like 
these  ? 

The  first  thing  to  be  said,  in  order  that  there 
may  be  no  mistake,  is  that,  in  the  world  we  live 
in,  the  special  reform  is  inevitable  and  indispen- 
sable. With  all  of  its  drawbacks  it  is  still  a  main 


86     GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

reliance  of  humanity  for  any  moral  awakening. 
Human  nature  is  not  big  enough  to  do  all  things 
at  once.  It  must  ever  and  again  become  absorbed 
in  the  partial  task,  or  else  spread  itself  out  over 
a  world  of  possibilities  in  thin,  reflective,  even- 
balanced  inefficiency.  Better  than  this,  a  thou- 
sand times  better,  are  those  nodes  of  concentrated 
activity  where  practical  men  see  the  urgent  need 
of  their  time  and  fight  their  fight  with  the  Enemy 
as  they  find  him. 

But  when  so  much  has  been  said,  we  may  re- 
turn to  the  undoubted  evils  that  attend  any  reform 
campaign,  whether  it  be  a  campaign  in  the  spirit 
of  a  man  or  in  society  at  large,  and  may  see  if 
anything  can  be  done  about  them.  Those  evils, 
in  a  word,  are  the  evils  that  go  with  favorite  vir- 
tues. No  man  can  devote  his  best  energies  to  a 
selected  and  preferred  virtue  without  danger  to 
his  moral  life.  The  favorite  virtue  brings  with 
it  a  favorite  vice  or  a  whole  company  of  favorite 
vices.  One  of  these  is  likely  to  be  the  vice  of  self- 
righteousness.  Another  is  that  of  intolerance. 
Still  another  is  that  peculiar  form  of  vice  in  which 
the  exaggerated  virtue  is  made  a  substitute  for 
other,  starved  and  neglected,  virtues;  the  one 
great  good  covering  a  multitude  of  sins,  in  a  way 
which  scripture  precedent  would  not  warrant. 

The  members  of  a  band  of  thieves  pride  them- 
selves upon  their  loyalty  to  the  gang.  The  high- 
wayman who  robs  the  rich  gives  generously  to  the. 


THE   CULTURE   OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS     87 

poor.  A  body  of  young  men  who  uphold  the  high- 
est standard  of  truth  and  honesty  show  an  easy 
conscience  as  regards  drink  and  gambling  and  the 
social  evil.  Even  women  of  the  purest  virtue,  as 
the  word  virtue  is  commonly  used,  are  sometimes 
sadly  lacking  in  the  sense  of  fair  play,  as  men  of 
honor  understand  fair  play,  and  fail  to  realize  that 
uncharitable  words  are  another  form  of  vice. 

Favorite  vices  go  with  favorite  virtues.  This 
fact  should  not  deter  us  from  cultivating  chosen 
virtues  when  occasion  may  demand,  But  it 
should  put  us  doubly  on  our  guard.  Let  us  have, 
if  need  be,  the  campaign  against  a  conspicuous 
wrong.  But  let  it  be  recognized  as  an  emergency 
measure.  Our  main  business  is  right  living,  all 
round  and  all  through.  The  great  reform  has  its 
necessary  work  to  do.  But,  as  soon  as  possible, 
that  work  is  to  be  finished.  It  is  to  be  laid  aside, 
in  order  that  the  regenerated  individual  or  com- 
munity may  enter  upon  the  normal  course  of 
general  growth.  That  normal  course  is  the  course 
in  which  wisdom  joins  with  tolerant  fellow- 
ship, holding  men  up  to  an  ideal  of  everlasting 
improvement. 

It  is  here  that  we  are  chiefly  concerned  with  the 
culture  of  righteousness  —  in  maintaining  and 
confirming  the  general  conception  of  life  which 
looks  to  incessant  moral  betterment.  Here  is  a 
subject  for  the  daily  meditation  of  wise  men  and 
women,  for  the  training  of  children  in  the  schools, 


88  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

for  consideration  in  every  profession,  institution, 
and  society  which  has  influence  in  the  shaping  of 
our  corporate  or  individual  life.  Let  us  think 
often  upon  these  things  and  let  us  seek  after  the 
better  ways. 

But  many  of  you,  I  am  sure,  have  felt  a  lack  in 
this  discussion  hitherto.  It  has  had  reference  to 
virtues  and  vices  as  if  these,  in  aggregation,  made 
up  our  moral  being.  You  have  felt  that  righteous- 
ness cannot  be  achieved  by  adding  one  pagan 
excellence  to  another ;  that  we  must  have  regard 
instead  to  motives,  to  faith  and  hope,  to  some 
vitalizing  spirit  which  shall  bring  to  every  man  a 
moral  strength  beyond  the  strength  of  any  man. 
You  look,  in  other  words,  for  some  recognition  of 
the  religious  side  of  morals,  with  the  conviction 
that  the  thing  omitted  is  the  really  essential  thing. 
This  view  appeals  to  me  so  strongly,  and  accords, 
in  fact,  so  nearly  with  my  own  thought,  that  I 
should  be  altogether  unwilling  to  let  the  occasion 
pass  without  some  mention  of  this  aspect  of  my 
subject,  though  the  difficulties  of  this  part  of  the 
discussion  are  obvious  and  plentiful. 

Any  attempt  at  the  cultivation  of  righteousness 
merely  by  the  cultivation  of  enumerated  virtues 
can  give  us  only  an  incoherent  and  machine-made 
morality.  The  moral  life,  to  reach  its  highest 
efficiency,  must  hold  with  the  largest  wisdom  and 
the  highest  fellowship  to  which  the  moral  agent 
can  attain  —  that  is,  with  his  religion,  or  what 


THE   CULTURE   OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS      89 

serves  him  as  a  religion.    Only  so  can  it  come  to 
its  proper  coherence  and  vitality. 

How  much  of  vitality  and  coherence  religion 
may  supply  will  appear  from  a  mere  passing 
glance  at  some  of  the  conceptions  of  Christianity. 
We  speak  of  righteousness.  In  the  words,  "Be 
ye  therefore  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  which 
is  in  Heaven  is  perfect,"  all  human  excellence  is 
thrown  into  such  comparison  that  it  looks  black, 
as  a  candle  flame  against  the  brightness  of  the 
sun.  But  while  all  human  worth  suffers  this 
deep  disparagement,  the  value  of  the  human  soul 
is  raised  to  such  a  height  that  it  can  be  calculated 
only  in  terms  of  the  death  of  the  Son  of  God. 
Hope  reaches  no  less  a  pitch  of  confidence  than 
that  this  mortal  life  shall  share  in  the  life  of  God 
Himself,  and  all  perspectives  of  this  earthly  ex- 
istence are  readjusted  to  the  view  from  the  gates 
of  Heaven.  Love,  purified,  quickened,  elevated, 
by  the  vision  of  love  divine,  made  universal  in 
the  recognition  of  human  brotherhood,  becomes 
the  ruling  motive  of  life.  The  uplift  of  such 
conceptions,  when  they  are  fairly  apprehended 
and  appropriated,  is  well-nigh  inconceivable. 
Their  dynamic  possibilities  are  past  all  compu- 
tation. In  a  world  in  which  such  ideas  are  at 
work,  as  positive  convictions  in  the  hearts  of 
men,  we  cannot  doubt  that  the  greatest  moral 
elevation  will  be  attained  in  lives  which  ac- 
knowledge their  supremacy. 


90  GOVERNMENT    BY   INFLUENCE 

Yet  the  very  loftiness  of  these  conceptions  for- 
bids that  any  one  human  mind  should  actually 
take  in  their  full  significance.  To  assimilate 
them  in  their  entirety  is  the  work  of  the  human 
race  in  the  ages  upon  ages.  One  age,  one  society, 
one  individual,  may  interpret  them  in  part.  Even 
that  is  a  great  achievement.  But  the  partiality 
of  the  interpretations  cannot  be  overlooked  when 
we  are  dealing  with  the  moral  interests  of  present- 
day  society.  The  man,  the  church,  the  people, 
who  approach  the  moral  life  by  the  starry  way, 
which  is  also  the  cloudy  way,  of  the  religious  life, 
cannot  escape  the  same  need  that  all  others  are 
under,  the  need  of  cultivation  of  the  moral  senti- 
ments, the  need  of  daily  betterment  as  regards 
moral  insight  and  the  practice  of  righteousness. 

A  man's  religion  may  indeed  become  for  him  a 
preferred  virtue  with  its  attendant  vices.  I  was 
told,  once  on  a  time,  of  an  influential  man  of 
business  who  gave  largely  to  the  support  of  the 
church  and  became  deeply  interested  in  its  ac- 
tivities. A  friend  suggested  that  he  should  join 
its  membership  in  his  home  community.  He 
asked  to  see  the  list  of  its  communicants.  This 
list  he  ran  through  quickly,  then  threw  it  down 
in  disgust. 

"Do  you  think  I  will  go  in  with  such  an  [ex- 
purgated] set-  he  did  not  say  expurgated; 
the  word  merely  represents  what  I  have  done 
with  his  speech-  "Do  you  think  I  will  go  in 


THE   CULTURE   OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS     91 

with  such  a  -  -  set  of  dead-beats  ?  They  don't 
pay  their  debts."  Now,  assuming  that  this  re- 
mark, apart  from  its  profanity,  was  justified  in 
the  situation  to  which  it  was  applied,  what  was  its 
significance  ?  I  think  it  showed  that  the  man  of 
affairs  made  a  favorite  virtue  of  paying  one's 
debts,  and  let  it  excuse  his  measure  of  irreligion ; 
while  the  church  members  to  whom  he  referred 
made  their  religion  a  favorite  virtue,  and  let  it 
excuse  their  measure  of  laxness  as  regards  their 
business  obligations. 

Perhaps  a  more  common  case  may  be  found  in 
the  devoted  adherent  of  some  form  of  religion 
whose  special  indulgence  is  in  the  vice  of  self- 
complacency,  of  self -righteousness.  It  was  this 
that  called  forth  the  sharp  rebukes  of  Jesus  in 
his  meetings  with  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees.  It 
would  be  hard  to  estimate  the  injury  which  this 
failing  has  done  to  both  morals  and  religion  in  all 
the  ages.  Clear  thought,  again  and  again,  has 
lost  its  rightful  influence  among  men  because 
joined  with  this  uncompanionable  vice,  this 
enemy  of  all  goodly  fellowship,  intolerance 
toward  those  who  follow  other  ways. 

And  there  are  other  ways,  which  may  be 
Christian,  profoundly  so,  while  not  bearing  con- 
spicuously the  name  of  Christ.  The  two  poles 
of  Christianity  may  be  found  in  the  Fatherhood  of 
God  and  the  Brotherhood  of  Man.  Each  of  these 
implies  and  involves  the  other.  A  theological  age 


92  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

laid  conscious  emphasis  on  the  doctrine  of  the 
Fatherhood.  A  humanitarian  age  now  lays  its 
emphasis  on  Brotherhood,  and  is  often  hesitant 
and  reticent  as  regards  the  language  of  Our 
Father.  It  may  be  that  this  reserve  is  not  irre- 
ligion  at  all,  but  only  the  way  in  which  this  age 
can  most  surely  approach  the  real  experience  of 
religion. 

Yet  the  responsibility  for  an  orderly  interpre- 
tation of  Christianity,  consecutive  with  the  in- 
terpretations of  the  past,  rests  in  this  age  with 
the  church,  as  in  all  other  ages.  The  church  is 
still  the  teacher  of  religion.  The  necessary  sepa- 
ration of  religious  instruction  from  our  secular 
schools  leaves  this  great  burden,  with  all  of  its 
weight  and  all  of  its  honor,  with  the  church  alone. 
For  my  part,  I  believe  the  church  will  not  fail  to 
carry  that  burden  safely  and  well,  and  even  to 
larger  issues  than  can  at  this  time  be  foreseen. 

But  in  this  very  separation  of  functions,  an- 
other moral  responsibility,  great  and  high,  is  laid 
upon  our  secular  education.  I  have  spoken  of 
the  value  of  impersonality,  as  it  appears  in  one 
necessary  stage  of  the  making  of  human  charac- 
ter —  the  impersonality  of  courts  and  of  sciences, 
which  are  no  respecters  of  persons.  These  things 
ultimately  are  not  impersonal,  for  they  help  us  to 
a  purer  and  truer  understanding  of  human  rela- 
tions. But  they  do  this  by  first  casting  out  human 
prejudice,  passion,  and  preference,  casting  out 


THE   CULTURE   OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS     93 

all  hopes  and  fears,  and  leading  men  into  the  im- 
partial recognition  of  objective  reality.  Now,  I 
think  I  shall  not  be  misunderstood  if  I  say  that 
the  teaching  of  morals  apart  from  religious  sanc- 
tions has  a  place  in  our  scheme  of  life  analogous 
to  that  of  these  impersonal  disciplines.  It  is  not 
impersonal  as  regards  human  relations,  but  only 
as  regards  that  unseen  world  with  which  religion 
is  concerned.  And  here,  I  think,  it  is  not  ulti- 
mately irreligious,  but  only,  for  the  time,  non- 
religious.  As  such,  it  has  a  part  to  perform,  a 
part  of  great  dignity  and  importance,  in  setting 
forth  those  purely  ethical  conceptions,  unmixed 
with  any  thought  of  supra-natural  rewards  and 
punishments,  which  even  the  ancient  pagan  world 
found  to  be  strong  meat  for  its  noblest  intellects, 
and  which  appear  to  not  a  few  writers  of  this 
modern  age  to  be  the  highest  themes  with  which 
the  mind  of  man  can  deal. 

It  is  not  that  I  would  offer  such  teaching  as 
sufficient  for  all  human  need.  Men  need  good 
news  and  a  Father  in  Heaven  as  much  in  this 
age  as  in  any  former  age.  But  the  study  of 
ethical  knowledge  and  the  training  in  simple 
morality  of  life  is  not  only  of  value  to  the 
individual  doer  and  student :  it  is  of  value  even 
to  religion  itself.  It  brings  the  teachings  of 
religion  ultimately  before  the  impartial  judg- 
ment of  that  simple  sense  of  difference  between 
right  and  wrong  which  the  Creator  has  put 


94  GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

into  the  spirit  of  man,  and  has  trained  and 
developed  through  the  long  course  of  his  history. 
The  strongest  appeal  which  religion  can  ever 
make  is  the  appeal  to  this  human  sense  of  moral 
difference;  and  the  cultivation  of  that  sense, 
through  science  and  literature  and  historical 
studies,  through  conduct  in  the  little  world  of  the 
school,  is  the  noblest  service  which  our  general 
education  has  to  render.  It  is  a  service  to  re- 
ligion and  law  and  common  intercourse  and  to 
every  other  interest  of  our  modern  life. 

This  is  your  Commencement,  members  of 
this  graduating  class.  You  commence  to  be  bach- 
elors of  arts  and  various  other  things.  You  are 
coming  out  from  this  University  into  more  direct 
participation  in  the  world  of  affairs  —  affairs 
which  reach  their  highest  difficulty  and  highest 
significance  in  questions  of  right  and  wrong.  The 
boys  in  a  swimming  pool,  particularly  on  a  chilly 
day,  are  wont  to  call  to  their  fellows  on  the  shore, 
"  Come  on  in,  the  water  is  fine  ! "  And  so  we  who 
left  school  life  for  active  life  a  good  many  years 
ago  now  call  to  you,  young  men,  "Come  in,  this 
Twentieth  Century  is  fine  !"  Science  and  inven- 
tion are  making  readjustments  a  daily  necessity. 
Prosperity  is  making  it  harder  every  day  to  hold 
up  to  the  old  moral  standards.  There  is  great 
danger  that  with  a  better  living  we  shall  get  a 
poorer  life.  People  are  crowding  now,  where  a 
generation  ago  they  were  few.  Yet  we  feel  the 


THE   CULTURE   OF  RIGHTEOUSNESS      95 

need  of  sharing  more  fairly  all  good  things  of  life 
with  all  of  our  fellow  men.  Faiths  are  changing. 
Even  while  we  hold  them  most  tightly  we  find 
that  they  are  gone,  leaving  only  their  clothes  or 
their  shadow  behind,  and  we  do  not  see  clearly 
what  is  to  take  their  place.  Come  in !  It  is  a 
world  of  genuine  difficulties  in  which  it  is  worth 
while  to  live  and  take  one's  part  as  it  comes. 

Faith,  Hope,  and  Love  —  they  are  with  us 
yet;  justice,  truth,  and  the  law  of  righteous- 
ness —  they  loom  as  large  as  ever.  Though 
their  forms  are  less  sharply  defined,  yet  none 
the  less  surely  they  dominate  the  scene.  Lib- 
erty and  law  are  wrestling  with  each  other 
still.  They  clinch  like  deadly  enemies,  and 
the  sweat  of  their  conflict  now  and  again  is 
red  with  human  blood.  Yet  they  are  lovers, 
more  true  to  each  other  than  were  even  David 
and  Jonathan,  and  their  struggle  is  all  for  the 
good  of  mankind.  Come,  young  men,  and  take 
your  part.  Be  as  wise  as  you  can  with  the 
heads  that  have  been  given  to  you.  Be  as  com- 
panionable as  you  can  without  becoming  less 
wise.  And  do  not  doubt  that  the  God  of  your 
fathers  will  help  you  as  He  helped  your  fathers  be- 
fore you  and  that  all  that  Heaven  gave  into  their 
lives,  Heaven  will  give  into  your  lives  as  well. 

And  you,  young  women,  who  are  about  to  leave 
this  institution,  you  will  find  many  alumnae  of 
American  colleges  awaiting  you.  And  these 


96          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

American  alumnae  have  already  acquitted  them- 
selves so  well  that  larger  work,  larger  responsi- 
bilities, larger  joy  of  service,  are  sure  to  be  yours. 
Come,  young  graduates,  men  and  women  both, 
and  enter  upon  a  new  course  of  study,  the  life- 
long study  of  righteousness,  which,  as  it  is  a  study 
laid  out  for  us  by  God  Himself,  when  He  laid  the 
courses  of  all  human  affairs,  shall  through  its 
various  leadings  lead  us  back  to  God. 


VI 

THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  IN  THE  MOVE- 
MENT FOR  INTERNATIONAL 
ARBITRATION 

An  Address  before  the  Thirteenth  Annual  Meeting  of  the 
Lake  Mohonk  Conference  on  International  Arbitration, 
May  23,  1907.  Published  in  the  Report  of  the  Meeting. 


VI 


THE   PUBLIC   SCHOOLS   IN  THE   MOVEMENT 
FOR  INTERNATIONAL  ARBITRATION 

B^  way  of  introduction,  I  may  venture  to 
repeat  the  recommendation  touching  this 
subject  contained  in  my  first  annual  re- 
port as  Commissioner  of  Education.     It  reads 
as  follows: 

The  second  recommendation  which  I  would  respectfully 
present  is  concerned  with  the  fact,  which  every  year  makes 
more  obvious,  that  our  public  education  has  passed  into 
an  international  stage  in  its  development.  The  approach  of 
the  second  International  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague 
has  turned  public  attention  to  the  many-sided  modern 
movement  toward  a  peaceful  adjustment  of  international 
relations.  Governments,  in  striving  to  maintain  an  honor- 
able peace,  require  the  reinforcement  of  popular  senti- 
ment, and  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  that  such  public 
sentiment  should  steadily  demand  a  peace  which  makes 
for  righteousness,  and  no  other  peace  than  that  which  will 
make  for  righteousness.  A  public  sentiment  calling  for 
such  peace  will  be  stable  only  when  it  rests  upon  an  appre- 
ciative understanding  of  other  nations.  In  this  there  is  a 
great  work  for  education  the  world  over,  that  it  help  the 
nations  understand  one  another.  Whatever  the  schools 
may  do  to  this  great  end  will  count  for  real  education. 


100          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

Can  any  form  of  learning,  in  fact,  be  more  liberalizing, 
more  expanding,  more  tonic,  than  the  insight  gained 
through  knowledge  of  other  peoples,  our  contemporaries, 
who  with  us  are  the  makers  of  modern  history  ? 

Already  a  considerable  movement  is  under  way  looking 
to  the  annual  commemoration  in  the  schools  of  the  United 
States  of  the  opening  of  the  first  Hague  conference,  which 
occurred  on  the  18th  day  of  May,  1899.  Such  a  celebration 
seems  eminently  desirable,  by  way  of  laying  due  emphasis 
in  the  schools  upon  the  vital  relations  of  modern  peoples 
one  to  another.  I  would  accordingly  recommend  that,  so 
far  as  consistent  with  state  and  local  conditions,  the  18th 
day  of  May  in  each  year  be  designated  as  a  day  of  special 
observance  in  the  schools.  It  is  particularly  desirable  that 
in  the  celebration  of  this  anniversary  day,  and  in  the  in- 
struction of  the  schools  throughout  the  year,  the  effort  be 
made  to  promote  an  insight  into  the  true  aims  and  aspira- 
tions of  our  own  nation  and  of  the  other  nations  with  whom 
we  are  to  work  together  in  the  making  of  a  higher  world 
civilization.  This  view  calls  for  a  more  thorough  teach- 
ing of  geography  and  history  in  the  elementary  schools, 
that  the  first  notions  formed  by  the  children  in  those  schools, 
of  our  relations  with  other  lands  and  peoples,  may  be  true 
and  temperate;  it  calls  for  a  better  teaching  of  modern 
languages  and  literatures  in  our  secondary  schools  and 
colleges;  and  in  the  more  highly  specialized  studies  of 
commercial  and  technical  schools,  it  calls  for  more  thor- 
ough and  accurate  instruction  in  all  subjects  having  to  do 
with  the  relations  of  our  home  land  with  foreign  lands. 
\/  This  is  not  a  foreign  view  of  American  education,  but 
rather  an  American  view;  for  it  is  already  clear  that 
American  institutions  can  reach  their  full  development 
only  by  finding  their  rightful  place  in  the  current  of  the 
world's  history,  and  that  only  by  so  doing  can  they  become 
fully  American. 


INTERNATIONAL  ARBITRATION         101 

While  no  one  will  attach  supreme  importance 
to  the  special  observance  of  one  day  in  the  school 
year,  even  such  annual  emphasis  upon  this 
theme  will  not  be  without  its  value.  I  am  the 
more  disposed  to  think  that  it  may  be  of  some 
significance,  from  the  fact  that  the  idea  of  such 
observance  has  arisen  quite  independently  in 
the  minds  of  different  persons  engaged  in  widely 
separate  educational  service.  I  had  planned 
to  make  this  recommendation  and  had  actually 
written  the  first  draft  of  it  before  I  knew  that 
such  a  plan  had  occurred  to  any  one  else.  When 
it  transpired  that  a  well-defined  movement  to 
this  end  was  already  under  way,  I  was  glad  of 
the  opportunity  of  adding  what  I  might  to  the 
impetus  of  that  movement. 

It  is  clear,  however,  that  a  celebration  which 
breaks  from  a  clear  sky  on  one  day  in  the  year 
and  passes  from  thought  when  that  day  is  past, 
cannot  take  a  deep  hold  on  the  minds  of  many 
children.  Nor  do  I  think  we  have  a  right  to 
devote  one  day  of  the  school  year  to  a  purpose 
which  has  no  connection  with  the  ends  of  general 
education.  It  is  not  with  a  view  to  propaganda 
of  an  isolated  reform  that  this  day  is  entitled  to 
its  special  place  in  our  school  calendar,  but 
with  a  view  to  a  neglected  and  essential  element 
in  general  education.  And  that  element  is  an 
appreciative  understanding  of  other  peoples 
than  our  own. 


102         GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

The  child  brought  up  apart  from  other  children 
misses  his  best  chance  of  a  practical  education. 
So  a  people  that  goes  on  in  ignorance  of  other 
^/  peoples  or  in  blind  antagonism  to  other  peoples, 
misses  its  chance  of  adding  their  civilization  to 
its  own.  It  is  just  this  element  of  a  liberal 
education  which  should  be  emphasized  in  the 
schools,  not  one  day  in  the  year  but  throughout 
the  year  —  such  a  knowledge  and  appreciation 
of  the  other  peoples  of  the  earth  as  shall  help  us 
to  add  the  good  things  of  their  civilization  to  our 
own  civilization  and  to  live  with  them  in  the 
enjoyment  of  civilized  relationships.  Even  well 
down  in  the  elementary  schools,  the  effort  of  our 
little  Americans  to  overcome  the  primitive  dis- 
trust and  disparagement  of  the  peoples  of  foreign 
lands  is  a  liberalizing  influence.  It  is,  indeed,  an 
Americanizing  influence. 

But  this,  after  all,  is  but  a  small  part  of  what 
the  schools  ought  to  do  to  promote  international 
arbitration.  The  best  that  they  can  do,  in  the 
long  run,  is  to  foster  the  genuine  spirit  of  arbitra- 
tion, and  to  establish  those  modes  of  thought 
that  dispose  men  to  arbitrate  their  differences. 
Let  us  consider  here  three  ways  of  settling  differ- 
ences among  men,  and  see  what  the  teaching 
of  the  schools  may  be  expected  to  do  by  way  of 
furthering  that  type  of  thought  which  lies  nearest 
to  arbitration.  The  primitive  way  of  settling  a 
quarrel  is  an  appeal , to  arms,  a  decisive  physical 


INTERNATIONAL  ARBITRATION         103 

fight.  This  is  the  spontaneous  method  of  un- 
controlled anger.  But  it  has  in  it  many  nobler 
elements,  and  chief  among  these  is  the  religious 
faith  that  the  God  of  might  and  right  will  add 
His  strength  to  the  strength  of  the  righteous 
cause.  Each  combatant  is  sure  that  the  righteous 
cause  is  his  own,  and  the  strong  sweep  of  his 
anger  and  his  faith  is  seen  in  his  readiness  to 
risk  losing  all  in  the  hope  of  gaining  all.  A  second 
way  is  the  way  of  compromise.  A  willingness  to 
compromise  shows  that  the  parties  to  the  quarrel 
hold  one  thing  as  of  greater  value  than  the 
things  for  which  they  are  contending,  and  that 
one  thing  more  precious  than  all  the  rest  is  peace. 
Or,  at  least,  each  of  the  contending  parties  holds 
that  a  fragment  of  that  for  which  it  strives, 
together  with  relief  from  strife,  is  better  than 
the  chance  of  gaining  all  through  hard  and 
dubious  conflict.  Compromise  has,  no  doubt, 
its  rightful  place  and  in  the  daily  dealings  of 
men  with  men  it  must  play  an  important  part  — 
a  larger  part,  indeed,  than  we  commonly  realize. 
But  on  the  whole  it  represents  a  weaker  attitude 
than  the  attitude  of  direct  antagonism  backed 
up  by  strong  conviction.  An  age  in  which  com- 
promise takes  the  leading  place  instead  of  a 
subsidiary  and  intercalary  place,  an  age  dis- 
tinctly characterized  by  the  spirit  of  compromise, 
is  not  "an  age  on  ages  telling"  when  "to  be 
living  is  sublime." 


104         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

A  third  method  of  settling  a  dispute,  a  method 
hard  to  practice  and  even  hard  to  define,  the 
method  which  arbitration  ultimately  represents 
and  reinforces,  is  the  method  of  finding  some 
ground  of  positive  agreement  higher  than  the 
ground  taken  by  either  antagonist  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  strife.  In  every  dispute  between 
honest  and  intelligent  disputants  we  find  some 
show  of  justice  in  each  of  the  conflicting  claims. 
The  method  of  war  crushes  the  claim  of  one 
side,  with  all  the  good  and  bad  there  is  in  it, 
and  gives  victory  to  the  other  side  with  all  of 
its  bad  as  well  as  its  good.  The  method  of  com- 
promise takes  the  course  which  leads  to  peace, 
even  though  much  of  the  good  of  either  cause  be 
sacrificed  by  the  way.  The  method  of  arbitration 
would  seem  to  be  merely  the  method  of  com- 
promise through  the  agency  of  a  third  party, 
but  essentially  it  is  more  than  this.  For  every 
well-conducted  international  arbitration  contrib- 
utes to  the  building  up  of  a  higher  conception 
of  international  obligations,  of  world  relations, 
and  is  accordingly  in  its  effect  a  bringing  of  the 
disputants  together  on  higher  and  more  stable 
ground  than  either  of  them  occupied  when  the 
strife  began.  I  think  this  view  may  be  abun- 
dantly justified  by  examples  from  modern  history. 
There  is  not  time,  however,  for  such  illustration, 
and  the  bare  and  general  statement  must  be  left 
to  stand  alone. 


INTERNATIONAL  ARBITRATION         105 

The  immediate  question  is  that  as  to  the  re- 
lation of  public  schools  to  the  type  of  thinking 
which  lies  back  of  arbitration  procedure.  It 
seems  clear  that  this  is  the  very  type  of  think- 
ing which  is  characteristic  of  modern  educa- 
tion at  its  best.  It  is  the  type  of  thinking  which 
should  be  promoted  in  schools  of  every  grade, 
in  the  interest  of  liberal  culture,  rightly  under- 
stood. It  is  by  promoting  such  culture  and  estab- 
lishing such  modes  of  thought  among  our  people 
everywhere  that  the  public  schools  can  lay  the 
surest  foundation  for  the  arbitration  principle. 

The  watchword  of  this  movement  may  fairly 
be  taken  as  the  watchword  of  all  modern  educa- 
tion, and  we  may  phrase  it  in  the  words,  Let  us 
look  for  a  better  way.  The  spirit  which  it  repre- 
sents is  at  one  with  that  of  modern  science  — 
of  that  science  which  is  undoubtedly  the  domi- 
nant influence  in  the  methods  of  modern  edu- 
cation. For  science,  with  all  of  its  strength  of 
conviction,  holds  its  doctrines  not  as  records  of 
final  attainment  nor  as  banners  set  up  for  a  battle 
to  the  end,  but  rather  as  well-laid  steps  of  an 
ascent.  It  expects  something  better  beyond, 
expects  to  rise  above  its  present  knowledge  and 
belief;  and  in  that  expectation  it  is  able  to  look 
upon  any  intelligent  opposition  as  indicating  the 
need  of  finding  some  higher  principle  which 
shall  solve  the  present  difference.  Even  in  the 
lower  schools,  by  ways  that  are  often  intangible, 


106         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

this  spirit  is  making  its  way.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  hope  that  it  will  become  broadly  character- 
istic of  the  teaching  of  all  of  our  schools,  and 
when  it  has  become  so  characteristic  of  that 
teaching,  the  principle  of  arbitration  will  be 
grounded  in  the  educational  consciousness  of 
our  whole  people. 

Before  we  leave  this  discussion,  there  are  two 
added  considerations  to  which  attention  should 
be  called.  The  arbitration  movement  looks  for 
its  success  to  the  cultivation  of  a  decent  respect 
for  the  opinions  of  mankind.  In  the  heat  of 
national  anger  it  is  too  much  to  expect  that  any 
people  will  welcome  from  its  opponent  the  sug- 
gestion that  there  are  better  grounds  on  which 
they  may  hope  to  meet.  If,  however,  our  people 
have  been  trained  from  their  youth  to  recognize 
in  every  sharp  difference  of  opinion  the  pos- 
sibility of  there  being  some  higher  and  better 
ground  of  agreement,  undiscovered  as  yet,  there 
cannot  fail  to  be  in  time  a  little  greater  readiness 
to  appeal  to  an  impartial  world,  to  peoples  not 
involved  in  the  dispute,  and  to  respect  the  sug- 
gestion from  without  of  a  better  way  to  an  hon- 
orable peace.  It  is  here  that  an  increased  un- 
derstanding of  other  nations  than  our  own  may 
be  expected  to  reinforce  the  teaching  that  leads 
men  to  hope  for  a  better  way.  It  is  not  simply 
that  a  knowledge  of  other  nations,  well  taught 
in  the  schools,  will  lead  us  to  consider  more 


INTERNATIONAL  ARBITRATION         107 

carefully  the  claims  of  an  antagonist  in  time  of 
trouble,  but  that  it  will  prepare  our  people,  or 
any  people,  to  look  with  more  favor  upon  an 
appeal  to  the  judgment  of  the  civilized  world. 

In  the  second  place,  such  an  appeal  to  an 
impartial  tribunal  would  be  strengthened  in 
the  minds  of  any  people  if  that  people  were 
grounded  in  some  of  the  fundamental  principles 
of  human  law.  On  other  grounds  than  this,  it  is 
to  be  desired  that  the  elementary  principles  of 
legal  right  should  be  more  distinctly  taught  in 
our  schools  along  with  the  principles  of  common 
morality.  This  is  not  the  place  to  enlarge  upon  a 
topic  like  this,  which  must  be  subordinate  to  the 
main  discussion  of  this  occasion.  But  it  is  not 
out  of  place  to  say  that  those  great  elementary 
principles  of  right  and  justice  which  have  been 
the  nourishing  thought  of  many  of  the  greatest 
minds  of  our  race,  are  in  themselves  a  most 
desirable  element  in  the  liberal  culture  of  all  our 
people.  I  cannot  but  think  that  a  people  trained 
to  have  respect  for  principles  such  as  these  will 
be  so  much  the  better  prepared  to  accept  in  time 
of  controversy  the  view  that  neither  party  to  the 
dispute  is  the  rightful  judge  of  the  cause,  but 
that  the  cause  should  be  judged  by  a  competent 
and  regularly  constituted  tribunal  which  should 
have  no  selfish  interest  in  the  question  at  issue. 

Briefly  stated,  then,  the  contention  of  this  paper 
is  as  follows:  That  the  schools  of  our  whole 


108          GOVERNMENT   BY  INFLUENCE 

people  may  properly  contribute  to  the  move- 
ment for  international  arbitration  only  in  ways 
that  contribute  to  the  general  purposes  of  educa- 
tion, but  that  positive  improvements  in  educa- 
tion are  called  for  to-day  in  ways  that  must 
inevitably  reinforce  the  arbitration  movement. 
Among  these  ways  are  endeavors  to  promote 
among  a  given  people,  as  our  own,  a  more  inti- 
mate and  appreciative  knowledge  of  the  character 
of  other  modern  nations  with  whom  this  people 
has  to  do ;  the  promotion  in  the  schools  of  that 
type  of  thinking  which  readily  passes  beyond  its 
partial  convictions,  no  matter  how  earnestly 
held,  to  larger  views  in  which  opposing  convic- 
tions may  find  their  rightful  recognition  and  come 
to  agreement;  the  teaching  in  the  schools,  as  a 
part  of  our  instruction  in  morals  and  civil  gov- 
ernment, of  some  of  the  elementary  principles 
of  legal  justice,  which  shall  enable  our  people 
to  adjust  themselves  freely  and  consciously  to 
the  reign  of  law  in  all  great  human  affairs.  The 
argument  amounts  to  this,  that  our  education 
of  all  the  people  shall  be  made  at  once  more 
scientific  and  more  humanistic  in  its  character, 
and  that  the  schools  shall  teach  the  people  in  all 
their  concerns  to  look  for  a  better  way. 

Let  it  be  added  that  education  cannot  be 
expected  to  prepare  the  way  specifically  for  the 
arbitration  of  any  particular  cause.  When  in- 
ternational irritation  has  arisen  and  there  is 


INTERNATIONAL   ARBITRATION         109 

threatening  of  war,  the  work  of  education  for  the 
time  is  under  arrest.  Not  only  the  laws  but  the 
teachers  as  well  are  silent  in  the  clash  of  arms, 
or  in  the  clash  of  temper  which  threatens  an 
appeal  to  arms.  Our  hope  is  that  education  may 
exercise  an  influence  far  in  advance  of  the  crisis, 
which  shall  turn  men  to  some  international 
tribunal  before  the  irritation  has  arisen  to  violent 
anger  from  which  there  is  no  appeal  but  to  arms. 
Education  can  do  very  little  to  allay  the  wrath 
of  nations,  but  it  can  do  much  to  hold  the  na- 
tions back  from  uncontrollable  wrath  while  the 
question  is  still  new  and  in  the  balance.  The 
schools  cannot  prepare  to-day  for  the  crisis  of 
this  year.  They  are  to  prepare  to-day  for  the 
crisis  of  ten  years  hence  or  a  generation  hence. 
But  this  of  itself  may  be  a  work  of  inconceivable 
significance.  And  the  way  in  which  so  great  a 
result  may  be  compassed  is  the  way  of  making 
familiar  and  natural  to  a  whole  people,  and  to 
possibly  antagonistic  peoples,  a  mode  and  habit 
of  thought,  a  moral  devotion  to  conceptions  of 
justice  and  righteousness,  which  shall  give  to 
the  advocates  of  arbitration  their  chance  to  be 
heard  and  understood. 


VII 

POSSIBLE    CO-OPERATION    BETWEEN 

THE  EDUCATIONAL  ASSOCIATIONS 

OF   DIFFERENT  COUNTRIES 

Contributed  to  a  Discussion  in  the  National  Council  of 
Education,  at  its  Meeting  at  Cleveland,  Ohio,  July  1, 
1908.  Published  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  National 
Education  Association  for  the  year  1908,  and  in  The 
Independent  of  August  6,  1908. 


VII 

POSSIBLE     CO-OPERATION     BETWEEN     THE 

EDUCATIONAL  ASSOCIATIONS   OF 

DIFFERENT  COUNTRIES 

THE  suggestion  which  was  made  to  this 
Council  one  year  ago,  that  steps  be 
taken  to  bring  the  National  Education 
Association  into  closer  co-operation  with  similar 
bodies  in  other  lands,  was  offered  in  the  con- 
viction that  the  greater  part  of  the  work  of 
education  in  all  lands  is  one  work,  and  that  all 
teachers  among  civilized  peoples  have  a  common 
cause.  There  is  abundant  ground  for  this  belief. 
The  legislative  bodies  of  many  nations  have 
found  enough  of  common  interest  to  make 
possible  an  Interparliamentary  Union,  and  that 
international  body  has  profoundly  influenced  the 
course  of  recent  history.  Yet  parliaments  are 
the  centers  of  positive  nationalism.  We  may 
fairly  expect  to  find  more  elements  of  unity  in 
the  schools  of  different  nations  than  in  their 
legislatures.  And  such  undoubtedly  is  now  the 
case. 

The  world  relationships  of  universities  have 
been    recognized,    with    varying    clearness,    for 


114        GOVERNMENT   BY  INFLUENCE 

seven  or  eight  centuries.  The  earlier  develop- 
ment of  schools  for  the  people  was  more  closely 
connected  with  the  rise  of  modern  nationalism. 
This  gave  us  higher  schools  which  emphasized 
unity,  alongside  of  lower  schools  which  empha- 
sized difference.  Such  a  distinction  of  course 
goes  down  to  the  fundamental  constitution  of 
society.  It  cannot  be  maintained,  as  a  principle 
of  sharp  separation,  where  the  distinctions  be- 
tween social  classes  have  been  smoothed  out  or 
are  in  the  way  of  disappearing.  Nations  which 
have  a  traditional  enmity  to  keep  alive  toward 
some  of  their  neighbors  —  a  memory  of  ancient 
quarrels  which  colors  all  their  history  —  are  at 
a  disadvantage  in  this  regard.  In  so  far  as  class 
distinctions  persist  in  such  societies,  with  some- 
thing of  the  finality  of  caste  distinctions,  a  lower 
class  will  be  taught  to  hate  another  people  while 
the  highest  class  is  learning  to  understand  other 
peoples. 

But  this  condition  can  hardly  continue,  un- 
modified, in  our  modern  world.  The  many  care 
to  learn  what  the  few  have  known.  The  scientific 
spirit  forbids  us  to  teach  in  the  lower  schools 
what  is  untrue  from  the  standpoint  of  the  higher 
schools.  Then,  there  is  a  New  Humanism  in  the 
world,  which  is  surely  spreading  abroad.  This 
new  humanism  recognizes  the  fact  that  to  know 
and  understand  living  men,  both  individuals  and 
nations,  is  a  great  part  of  any  complete  educa- 


INTERNATIONAL   CO-OPERATION       115 

tion.  This  humanism  tinges  all  of  the  social 
and  the  international  striving  of  our  time.  It 
tinges  our  education.  I  have  had  occasion  before 
to  speak  of  one  little  symptom  of  it  —  a  straw  on 
the  waters  of  our  primary  schools  —  in  the  wide 
popularity  of  that  children's  book,  the  "  Seven 
Little  Sisters,"  by  Miss  Andrews.  And  for  more 
pretentious  indications  of  the  same  current  you 
would  not  have  far  to  seek. 

We  live  already  in  a  world  in  which  men  are 
trying  to  understand  one  another.  Men  are 
trying  to  understand  their  neighbors,  and  that 
is  the  better  part  of  democracy.  Men  are  trying 
to  understand  other  peoples  and  nations,  and 
that  is  the  foundation  of  our  new  world-politics. 
The  reason  why  we  may  hope  to  understand  the 
rest  of  the  world,  the  reason  why  we  even  care 
to  understand  the  rest  of  the  world,  is  that  our 
differences  stand  out  from  a  background  of 
agreement,  a  substratum  of  ultimate  unity.  The 
differences  are  picturesque  and  interesting,  and 
at  times  they  command  the  whole  field  of  atten- 
tion. Without  national  peculiarities  and  even 
oppositions,  our  world-unity  would  be  a  poor 
thing,  a  dull  and  insipid  uniformity.  But  we 
must  not  forget  that,  after  all,  the  differences  get 
their  life  and  worth  from  that  underlying  unity. 
The  time  has  come  when  men  can  give  attention 
to  the  common  human  purposes  of  all  the  tribes 
of  men  without  suspicion  of  treason  against 


116         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

their  own  government.  In  our  own  land  this 
is  pre-eminently  true.  As  Mr.  Stead  has  said 
of  us,  "America  is  the  one  great  international 
country  of  the  world." 

When  Professor  Payne  of  the  University  of 
Virginia  a  few  years  ago  made  his  comparative 
study  of  the  public  elementary  school  curricula 
of  the  leading  culture  nations,  he  found  an  ap- 
proximate agreement  in  the  subjects  of  instruc- 
tion and  in  the  relative  amount  of  time  devoted 
to  different  subjects  in  the  schools  of  representa- 
tive cities.  Aside  from  differences  as  to  the 
inclusion  or  exclusion  of  religious  doctrine,  the 
most  important  variations  were  those  relating 
to  the  language  employed  and  studied  and  the 
content  of  instruction  in  the  national  history  and 
literature.  Even  here  the  instruction  in  the 
schools  under  consideration  might  readily  be 
compared  with  reference  to  its  form  and  the 
principles  guiding  the  choice  of  materials  in 
those  subjects.  So  striking,  indeed,  was  the 
agreement  which  his  study  revealed  that  Pro- 
fessor Payne  was  led  to  make  the  following 
remarks : 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  our  educational  theorists  have 
sometimes  excused  themselves  from  making  a  compara- 
tive study  of  these  different  curricula  by  an  exaggeration 
of  the  supposed  disparity  of  aim  and  the  consequent  im- 
probability of  gaining  suggestions  of  worth.  The  tables 
.  .  .  show  such  a  slight  difference  of  curricula  in  the  ele- 


INTERNATIONAL   CO-OPERATION       117 

mentary  schools  of  the  several  countries,  that  it  makes  one 
suspect  either  that  the  aim  of  education  does  not  determine 
what  shall  be  studied,  or  that  the  aims  of  the  several 
countries  do  not  differ  as  much  as  has  been  supposed.1 

And  again, 

No  one  can  fail  to  be  impressed  with  the  fact  that  the 
general  principles  which  govern  the  selection  and  arrange- 
ment of  the  subject  matter  of  the  elementary  curriculum 
are  practically  the  same  in  the  four  educational  systems 
here  studied.2 

Without  doubt,  national  differences  must  still 
be  more  influential  in  determining  the  teaching 
of  the  lower  schools  than  that  of  the  univer- 
sities. In  some  degree  this  difference  must,  I 
think,  be  regarded  as  permanent.  A  strong 
nationalism  and  even  a  certain  wholesome  pro- 
vincialism are  to  be  cherished  in  those  schools. 
But  it  is  quite  as  important,  and  is  in  truth 
essential,  in  this  modern  age,  that  the  lower 
schools  preserve  their  continuity  with  the  teach- 
ing of  the  universities  and  their  loyalty  to  as- 
pirations which  all  civilized  nations  hold  in 
common. 

I  hope  that  our  great  National  Education  As- 
sociation, in  its  unquestioned  loyalty  to  our  na- 
tional  ideals,  may  take  steps  which  shall  promote 

1  Payne,  Bruce  Ryburn.    Public  elementary  school  curricula. 
Silver,  Burdett  and  Company  [1905],  pp.  15-16. 

2  Idem,  p.  182.     The  four  educational  systems  studied  were 
those  of  the  United  States,  England,  Germany,  and  France. 


118        GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

the  good  understanding  now  gaining  ground 
among  the  nations  of  the  earth.  Let  us  send  our 
emissaries  to  confer  with  similar  bodies  in  other 
civilized  lands,  as  we  have  so  often  welcomed 
foreign  teachers  in  our  great  annual  gatherings. 
Let  us  take  our  part  in  setting  up  world-standards 
in  the  domain  of  culture  and  education.  Such 
a  movement,  I  believe,  will  make  for  peace; 
but  if  so,  it  will  accomplish  that  end  by  promot- 
ing one  of  the  best  tendencies  in  modern  educa- 
tion, a  humane  tendency,  which  may  be  summed 
up  in  the  saying,  Let  us  see  if  we  cannot  under- 
stand one  another. 


VIII 

ARE    WE   AN   INVENTIVE   PEOPLE   IN 
THE  FIELD   OF  EDUCATION? 

An  Address  before  the  Vassar  College  Chapter  of  Phi  Beta 
Kappa,  June  10, 1907.  Published  in  Science,  August  9, 
1907. 


VIII 

ARE    WE    AN    INVENTIVE    PEOPLE    IN    THE 
FIELD    OF    EDUCATION? 

EVERY  invention,  I  suppose,  is  made  up  of 
individual  and  social  elements,  and  com- 
bines them  in  a  way  different  from  that  of 
every  other  invention.  There  is  no  more  inter- 
esting department  of  literary  criticism,  or  aesthetic 
criticism  generally,  than  that  which  seeks  to  trace 
out  the  respective  contributions  of  the  race  and 
the  individual  in  any  work  of  art.  This  is  illus- 
trated in  a  recent  discussion  of  the  distinction 
between  the  folk-epic  and  the  art-epic,  the  char- 
acteristic difference,  for  example,  between  the 
Iliad  and  Paradise  Lost.1  Some  Homer,  in 
the  one  instance,  whatever  his  name,  gave  the 
final  form  to  a  poetic  tale  that  must  have  been 
shaping  itself  in  the  traditions  of  his  people  for 
many  generations.  In  the  other  instance,  in 
which  we  may  distinguish  the  poem  from  the  con- 
temporary materials  out  of  which  it  was  con- 
structed, the  work  of  the  poet  looms  large,  and 

1  By  Professor  C.  B.  Bradley  in  The  University  of  California 
Chronicle  for  June,  1906. 


122         GOVERNMENT  BY   INFLUENCE 

the  work  of  the  people  back  of  him  is  obscured 
by  his  personal  fame.  Yet,  when  we  analyze 
even  Milton's  art,  with  all  of  its  manifestation  of 
a  fearless  and  independent  personality,  we  find  it 
related  in  the  subtlest  ways  with  the  literary  tra- 
dition of  his  time. 

So  it  is  in  the  history  of  mechanical  invention. 
We  have  seen  recently  a  running  discussion  of 
the  origin  of  the  electric  trolley  car.  This  very 
modern  invention  is  commonly  referred  for  its 
beginnings  to  the  electric  railway  first  operated 
at  Richmond,  Virginia,  in  1888.  But  it  appears 
that  that  undertaking  had  a  forerunner,  and  that 
forerunner  in  its  turn  had  a  prototype,  and  the 
successful  American  inventor  is  found  to  be  only 
the  topmost  figure  of  a  human  pyramid,  made  up 
of  no  one  knows  how  many  experimenters  in  this 
particular  field.  The  Patent  Office  has  difficulty 
enough  in  distinguishing  each  new  invention  from 
its  patented  predecessors.  But  when  we  go  aside 
from  the  series  of  formal  patents  and  look  to  the 
succession  and  mingling  of  motives  and  ideas, 
the  tangle  passes  our  ability  to  unravel.  We 
can  only  see  how  inextricably  the  stroke  of  in- 
dividual initiative  is  enmeshed  in  the  movements 
of  a  whole  people,  and  that  very  complication  we 
find  it  a  delight  to  contemplate. 

Now,  this  social  character  of  all  invention  ap- 
pears in  a  peculiarly  vital  way  in  any  original 
work  in  education.  For  education  in  a  special 


ARE   WE   AN   INVENTIVE   PEOPLE?      123 

sense  not  only  springs  from  the  people,  but  in 
turn  creates  the  people  from  which  it  springs. 
Education  is  its  own  father.  An  over-emphasis 
on  individuality  in  education  would  quickly  carry 
us  away  from  the  line  of  direct  succession.  It 
would  give  us  isolation  and  sterility  instead  of  re- 
creating the  spiritual  life  of  the  race. 

One  cannot  add  too  quickly  that  in  the  nature 
of  things  the  danger  of  a  dead  lack  of  individual- 
ity is  usually  a  more  threatening  danger.  But  let 
us  at  once  get  down  to  our  examples.  To  begin 
with,  we  may  take  the  kindergarten.  There  has 
hardly  been  a  more  distinct  and  conspicuous  in- 
vention in  the  whole  history  of  schools.  It  is  a 
thoroughly  conscious  and  modern  work  of  art, 
in  which  the  personal  agency  of  the  inventor 
comes  to  the  fore.  That  is  the  very  weakness  of 
the  invention.  To  this  day  it  has  not  been  assim- 
ilated. In  our  educational  concert  it  is  a  voice 
that  sweetly  sings  in  tune  but  that  refuses  to  blend 
with  other  voices  of  the  chorus.  There  may  be 
different  explanations  of  this  lack  of  accord.  It 
may  be  that  the  individual  note  is  permanently 
at  variance  with  anything  that  can  be  made  uni- 
versal. Or  it  may  be  that  the  kindergarten  is 
merely  in  advance  of  the  age  and  will  bring  the 
rest  of  education  round  into  adjustment  with  it- 
self. It  seems  pretty  clear  that  both  explanations 
are  in  part  correct.  The  kindergarten,  with  cer- 
tain other  forces  that  have  worked  toward  sim- 


124          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

ilar  ends,  has  brought  our  elementary  education  a 
long  way  toward  its  type  of  faith  and  practice. 
Yet  the  emphasis  on  what  is  distinctively  Froebel- 
ian  still  keeps  it  a  thing  apart,  and  seems  likely  to 
set  a  permanent  limit  to  its  ascendency. 

It  will  appear,  from  this  reference  to  the  work  of 
Froebel,  that  we  are  not  now  concerned  simply  or 
chiefly  with  those  inventions  which  bear  the  sharp 
stamp  of  one  man's  individuality.  It  is  a  minor 
consideration  that  the  invention  should  be  known 
at  all  as  the  work  of  a  single  inventor.  Some  of 
the  most  marked  of  immediate  successes  and  ul- 
timate failures  have  had  that  distinctive  imprint. 
Such,  for  example,  was  the  monitorial  system,  in 
the  forms  given  to  it  by  Joseph  Lancaster  and 
Doctor  Bell.  Such  a  system  may  have  a  large 
usefulness  of  its  own  in  the  course  of  educational 
progress,  but  it  is  as  scaffolding  rather  than  as 
part  of  the  permanent  structure.  Its  very  insist- 
ence upon  that  which  is  one  man's  makes  it  less 
fit  to  serve  the  great  needs  of  Everyman. 

So  in  varying  degrees  the  educational  inven- 
tions of  the  ages  combine  the  distinct  contribution 
of  this  or  that  inventor  with  the  broad  tendencies 
of  an  inventive  people.  What  are  some  of  the 
other  inventions  which  Europe  has  contributed 
to  educational  history  ?  I  mention  only  a  few  of 
them  and  with  little  thought  for  sequence  of  any 
sort.  There  is  the  educational  system  of  the 
Jesuits,  particularly  in  its  seventeenth  and  eigh- 


ARE   WE   AN   INVENTIVE   PEOPLE?      125 

teenth  century  form.  There  is  the  English  uni- 
versity, made  up  of  federated  colleges.  There  is 
the  seminar,  which  has  been  such  an  instrument 
in  the  making  of  German  university  instruction. 
There  are  two  recent  contributions  of  the  Swedish 
people,  the  Sloyd  system  of  hand-work  and  the 
Ling  system  of  educational  gymnastics.  Let  us 
add  the  seminary  for  teachers,  the  school  garden, 
the  Hilfsschule  or  school  for  backward  children, 
the  system  of  higher  institutions  for  commercial 
education,  the  Gouin  method  and  various  other 
successful  methods  in  the  teaching  of  modern 
languages,  the  English  system  of  university  ex- 
tension. Many  others  will,  no  doubt,  occur  to 
you.  When  w^e  come  to  think  over  the  list,  it 
appears  that  much  has  been  accomplished,  and 
that  European  education  has  not  only  been 
greatly  widened  since  the  Middle  Ages,  to  reach 
a  manifold  larger  constituency,  but  has  also  been 
improved  to  a  wonderful  degree  by  the  progress 
of  educational  invention. 

When  we  would  institute  a  comparison  be- 
tween European  and  American  contributions  to 
such  improvement,  it  is  well  that  we  consider 
first  the  wider  range  of  invention.  The  world  at 
large  gives  to  the  Americans  the  credit  of  being  a 
highly  inventive  people  as  regards  mechanical 
devices.  The  attention  of  our  people  was  early 
turned  in  this  direction.  Certain  conspicuous 
successes  fired  the  national  imagination,  and  the 


126         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

stress  of  economic  need  drove  us  to  the  same  end. 
The  Patent  Office  became  a  centre  of  national 
pride.  To  take  out  a  patent  or  buy  the  right  to 
sell  a  patented  article  or  at  least  to  buy  something 
with  the  magic  patent  label  attached  thereto,  be- 
came a  well-nigh  universal  ambition.  And  in 
sober  truth  our  record  in  the  making  of  useful 
inventions  is  really  wonderful.  At  first  thought 
and  without  an  effort  you  can  recall  the  lightning 
rod,  the  steamboat,  the  cotton  gin,  the  whole 
series  of  reaping  machines  down  to  the  latest 
combination  harvester,  the  sewing  machine,  the 
telegraph,  the  telephone,  the  arc  and  the  incan- 
descent electric  light,  the  phonograph,  and  twenty 
other  things  that  are  now  counted  among  the  nec- 
essaries of  modern  life.  It  is  a  dazzling  list,  and 
may  well  make  us  forget  the  things  we  have  not 
ourselves  invented,  but  have  borrowed  from  other 
lands.  On  second  thought,  however,  we  recall 
those  notable  creations,  the  steam  engine,  the 
balloon,  the  power  loom,  the  locomotive  engine, 
the  daguerreotype  —  first-fruit  of  modern  photog- 
raphy,—  the  spectroscope,  wireless  telegraphy, 
and  many  others  that  the  wit  of  Europe  has  de- 
vised. However  much  we  may  lead  in  the  num- 
ber and  variety  of  our  cunning  contrivances,  there 
is  enough  for  which  we  are  indebted  to  other 
lands  to  check  our  conceit  and  assure  us  that 
we  have  competitors. 

On  the  whole,   however,  in  the   domain   of 


ARE  WE  AN   INVENTIVE   PEOPLE?      127 

mechanism  we  are  undoubtedly  in  the  lead.  The 
fact  that  the  number  of  patents  issued  annually 
in  the  United  States  is  now  only  a  little  less  than 
the  whole  number  issued  in  all  of  the  rest  of  the 
civilized  world  is  not  without  significance.  But 
when  we  turn  to  creative  literature  and  the  other 
arts  the  case  is  changed.  Here  the  leadership 
rests  with  Europe.  We  have  done  good  work  in 
this  field  and  are  rapidly  doing  better,  but  not  yet 
with  that  confident  leadership  which  we  display 
in  mechanical  invention.  Many  of  the  best  short 
stories  are  ours.  We  have  a  score  and  more  of 
writers  of  creditable  verse  —  and  even  Europe 
does  not  seem  to  be  over-productive  of  great 
poems  in  these  days.  We  are  producing  some 
virile  sculpture  that  is  not  merely  imitative,  and 
our  painters  can  now  command  the  respect  and 
admiration  of  the  world.  The  superiority  of  our 
illustration  art  is  recognized.  We  are  erecting 
many  good  buildings  and  are  producing  some 
good  music.  But,  after  all,  the  preponderance  of 
inventive  excellence  in  these  departments  is  still 
conceded  to  Europe.  Our  architects  study  at 
the  Beaux  Arts,  our  musicians  at  Leipsic  and 
Berlin,  and  our  young  painters  are  known  to  the 
world  when  they  have  exhibited  at  the  Paris 
Salon. 

How,  then,  does  it  stand  with  us  in  the  field  of 
education  ?  I  think  any  one  who  reads  in  the 
German  pedagogical  literature  of  our  day  has 


128          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

now  and  then  a  sense  of  hopelessness  of  any  edu- 
cational originality.  The  range  of  its  suggestion 
is  in  fact  astounding.  The  new  plan  and  con- 
ception of  educational  procedure  which  is  just 
dawning  above  his  horizon  is  very  likely  to  appear 
in  some  German  pamphlet  or  even  in  some 
"Handbuch  der  Padagogik"  as  a  familiar  notion, 
the  boundaries  of  which  have  been  well  marked 
out  and  its  values  weighed  in  the  balance.  So  any 
one  familiar  with  the  stream  of  educational  in- 
fluence which  has  long  been  crossing  the  Atlantic 
in  our  direction  will  proceed  with  caution  in 
naming  our  American  contributions  to  educa- 
tional invention.  Yet  it  will  be  admitted  that 
pedagogic  discussion  in  Germany  and  in  other 
countries  of  Europe  often  outruns  by  far  the  prac- 
tical embodiment  of  ideas  in  working  institutions, 
and  even  the  great  reach  of  German  educational 
doctrine  still  leaves  some  things  to  the  educa- 
tional makers  of  other  lands. 

The  Europeans  themselves  are  generous  in 
giving  us  credit  for  the  origination  of  a  variety  of 
educational  contrivance.  Among  the  particulars 
in  this  bill  of  credit  have  been  mentioned  the 
American  school  of  library  practice,  the  kitchen 
garden,  the  high  school  laboratory  for  instruc- 
tion in  natural  science,  co-education  in  secondary 
schools  and  colleges,  the  combination  school  of 
the  Pratt  and  the  Drexel  Institute  type.  It  is 
difficult  for  us  to  form  a  list  of  our  own.  We  are 


ARE  WE  AN   INVENTIVE   PEOPLE?      129 

too  close  to  the  facts  to  be  sensible  of  their  dis- 
tinguishing characters,  and  besides  we  know  that 
Europe  has  many  surprises  that  might  trip  us  if 
we  claimed  too  much.  But  at  a  venture  I  would 
suggest  the  following  as  among  our  original  con- 
tributions to  education,  making  no  claim,  how- 
ever, that  the  list  is  all-inclusive  or  even  includes 
all  of  the  best  that  we  have  done. 

First,  the  non-sectarian  elementary  school  for 
all  classes  of  the  community,  answering  to  our 
democratic  social  organization  and  our  religious 
liberty. 

Secondly,  the  American  high  school,  serving  at 
once  as  a  continuation  of  the  elementary  school 
and  an  introduction  to  the  higher  education,  with 
courses  meeting  a  variety  of  tastes  and  needs. 

Thirdly,  the  American  university,  with  its  com- 
bination of  instruction  and  research,  of  cultural 
and  technological  courses,  and  with  liberal  and 
professional  departments  often  dovetailing  into 
each  other.  To  this  might  be  added  that  notable 
invention,  that  new  development  of  personal 
efficiency,  the  American  university  president. 

To  these  institutions,  at  the  core  and  center  of 
our  educational  system,  we  might  easily  add  a 
number  of  minor  features  of  that  system,  no  one 
of  them  insignificant  in  itself.  The  summer 
school  may  be  mentioned,  with  its  home-study 
development,  as  in  the  Chautauqua  type;  the 
text-book  in  its  better  forms,  and  the  better  type 


130         GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

of  instruction  based  on  the  use  of  the  book ;  the 
college  gymnasium,  for  physical  education;  the 
consolidated  country  school,  with  provision  for 
the  transportation  of  pupils ;  the  organization  of 
public  libraries  and  museums  in  close  connection 
with  the  work  of  public  schools.  How  many 
others  there  are  that  come  crowding  on  the  atten- 
tion !  One  is  tempted  to  mention  Helen  Keller 
as  one  of  our  most  admirable  educational  achieve- 
ments. The  story  of  her  training  into  normal  and 
honored  womanhood  is  one  of  the  most  stimulat- 
ing passages  in  our  educational  history.  And 
Tuskegee  is  another.  Then,  too,  we  recall  our 
schools  for  the  training  of  nurses,  which  in  a  very 
few  years  have  come  to  enroll  twenty  thousand 
students  annually.  I  may  speak  of  another  ex- 
ample, which  falls  within  my  own  sphere  of  labor, 
for  as  a  new  invention  it  was  the  work  of  my 
honored  predecessors.  I  refer  to  that  special 
type  of  industrial  training  which  is  connected 
with  the  introduction  of  domestic  reindeer  into 
Alaska. 

In  that  northern  country  the  necessity  of  mak- 
ing some  better  provision  by  which  the  natives 
might  clothe  and  feed  themselves,  was  the 
mother  of  this  combined  industrial  and  educa- 
tional invention.  Reindeer  were  imported  from 
Siberia.  Teachers  were  brought  from  Lapland. 
And  the  Eskimo  were  set  to  the  lesson  of  caring 
for  the  deer,  of  breaking  them  to  the  sled,  of  using 


ARE   WE   AN   INVENTIVE   PEOPLE?      131 

them  in  profitable  service  of  the  incoming  white 
population;  and  so  of  adjusting  their  lives  to  a 
new  industry,  by  which  they  might  maintain 
themselves  in  the  face  of  new  conditions  which 
threatened  their  very  existence.  Here  was  a  truly 
constructive  treatment  of  a  most  difficult  racial 
problem.  A  new  industry  was  fitted  to  new  con- 
ditions and  a  new  education  was  based  on  that 
new  industry.  While  the  arrangement  has  not 
yet  shown  what  its  full  development  may  be,  it 
has  become  well  established  in  these  more  than 
fifteen  years,  and  already  it  has  made  its  place 
and  proved  its  usefulness. 

But  we  cannot  fairly  estimate  the  measure  of 
our  inventiveness  unless  we  turn  to  the  other 
side,  and  see  what  are  some  of  the  defects  in  our 
system  which  we  have  left  uncorrected.  These 
are  the  points  where  our  educational  invention 
has  thus  far  failed  to  do  its  work,  and  they  are 
neither  few  nor  unimportant.  I  think  it  will  ap- 
pear that  all  along  the  line,  from  the  bottom  to 
the  top,  our  educational  system,  the  object  of  so 
great  national  pride,  is  still  marked  by  serious 
inadequacies. 

We  have  not  yet  made  any  great  improvement 
in  the  nurture  of  children  at  home,  up  to  the  kin- 
dergarten age  or  the  age  of  the  primary  school. 

We  have  not  yet  brought  the  kindergarten 
into  full  adjustment  to  our  educational  system 
nor  devised  any  adequate  substitute  for  the 
kindergarten. 


132          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

We  have  found  ways  of  keeping  one  half  of  our 
pupils  in  school  up  to  the  sixth  or  seventh  grade, 
but  we  have  not  found  ways  of  keeping  all  of 
them  to  the  end  of  the  elementary  course. 

We  have  not  yet  organized  nature  studies  in  the 
schools  into  any  well-knit  adjustment  to  general 
education. 

We  have  not  yet  carried  our  instruction  in 
drawing  up  into  fully  effective  training  for  the 
fine  arts,  in  secondary  and  higher  schools. 

We  have  not  yet  brought  our  religious  educa- 
tion, as  carried  on  in  Sunday-schools,  into  any 
effective  parallelism  with  the  secular  instruction 
of  the  public  schools. 

We  have  not  yet  brought  our  normal  schools 
into  satisfactory  adjustment  with  our  cherished 
sequence  of  schools  from  the  kindergarten  to  the 
university. 

We  have  not  yet  wrought  out  a  satisfactory 
arrangement  for  the  training  of  teachers  for 
secondary  and  higher  schools. 

We  have  hardly  as  yet  established  a  permanent 
teaching  profession. 

We  have  not  devised  adequate  means  of  giving 
needed  cultivation,  aesthetic,  intellectual,  and 
moral,  to  the  individuals  who  make  up  the  stu- 
dent body  of  our  mammoth  universities. 

We  have  yet  to  work  our  way  through  the  gas- 
eous, centrifugal  atomism  of  our  college  elective 
courses  into  an  organized  and  unified  national 
culture. 


ARE   WE   AN   INVENTIVE   PEOPLE?      133 

We  have  not  yet  achieved  a  national  standard 
in  our  academic  and  professional  education,  nor 
have  we  organized  any  effective  and  economical 
co-operation  among  our  schools  of  graduate  in- 
struction and  research. 

We  have  not  yet  devised  ways  by  which  pub- 
lic education  can  be  definitely  and  adequately 
focussed  upon  the  improvement  of  our  national 
morality. 

The  list,  again,  is  by  no  means  complete,  but 
it  is  surely  long  enough  for  the  purposes  of  this 
discussion. 

I  do  not  take  a  pessimistic  view  of  the  situation 
in  which  these  defects  appear.  In  every  one  of 
the  particulars  enumerated,  serious  efforts  toward 
improvement  are  making  even  now,  and  we  can- 
not doubt  that  full  success  will  ultimately  be 
achieved.  There  have  been  devoted  teachers 
who  have  labored  long  for  such  improvement, 
and  in  some  instances  their  accomplishment  has 
been  great  and  beneficent.  But  that  our  triumphs 
in  these  particulars  have  been  local  and  excep- 
tional rather  than  permanent  and  national,  will 
be  generally  agreed,  and  it  is  well  that  we  look 
this  unwelcome  fact  in  the  face. 

We  may  now  attempt  a  direct  answer  to  the 
question  which  was  asked  at  the  beginning,  Are 
we  an  inventive  people  in  the  field  of  education  ? 
We  are,  unmistakably,  an  inventive  people  in  this 
field.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  by  any  one  who 


134         GOVERNMENT  BY   INFLUENCE 

looks  upon  the  exuberant  Americanism  of  our 
elementary  schools,  the  great  expansion  and  con- 
tinued readjustment  of  our  secondary  education, 
the  growth  of  our  universities  and  of  univer- 
sity influence  in  ways  that  catch  so  exactly  our 
national  characteristics  and  turn  them  to  aca- 
demic ends;  nor  can  it  be  doubted  by  any  one 
who  watches  from  year  to  year  the  spread  of  our 
education  into  new  fields  by  new  and  untried 
processes.  We  are  inventive  in  our  education, 
but  it  is  not  yet  clear  that  we  are  pre-eminent  in 
this  regard,  and  our  educational  invention  still 
lags  far  behind  our  invention  in  the  domain  of 
mechanism. 

We  may  easily  be  misled  by  the  flattering  re- 
ports of  foreign  visitors.  With  all  of  their  frank- 
ness in  pointing  out  our  defects,  their  general 
criticism  of  our  schools  is  for  the  most  part  ex- 
tremely favorable.  But  we  must  not  forget  that 
education  with  us  is  in  the  sweep  of  a  strong  tide 
of  popular  sentiment.  Every  invention  that  we 
have  put  forth  is  carried  forward  by  that  current 
and  finds  opportunity  to  do,  in  full  swing,  its 
destined  work.  Not  that  individual  inventors  do 
their  work  unhampered  and  with  no  discouraging 
delays.  That  could  never  be.  But,  by  contrast 
with  Europe,  the  way  of  educational  improve- 
ment here  is  direct  and  clear.  We  cannot  yet 
fairly  judge  what  our  education  would  accomplish 
under  greater  difficulties  and  in  the  face  of  closer 


ARE  WE  AN  INVENTIVE  PEOPLE?     135 

competition.  It  is  safest  for  us  to  take  the  mod- 
erate view,  and  hold  that  our  educational  suc- 
cesses thus  far,  great  and  glorious  as  they  are,  are 
only  great  enough  to  confirm  our  hope  and  confi- 
dence, and  not  yet  sufficiently  great  to  insure  to 
us  the  ultimate  leadership. 

Our  inventiveness  in  this  field  is  less  con- 
spicuous, as  has  been  said,  our  education  shows 
less  of  readiness  to  seize  obscure  suggestions  and 
carry  them  through  to  unlooked-for  triumphs  of 
efficiency,  than  that  which  we  have  long  disclosed 
in  our  Patent  Office  reports.  Yet  this  field  is  at 
least  as  interesting  as  the  other.  It  makes  in- 
tense appeal  to  widely  differing  minds,  and  public 
attention  is  often  drawn  to  new  educational  pro- 
jects in  a  measure  that  is  truly  astonishing. 
What  is  needed  is  that  that  public  interest 
should  be  more  sustained  and  more  discriminat- 
ing; that  the  inventor  in  education  should  have 
the  unfailing  stimulus  which  has  goaded  our 
mechanical  inventors  to  their  most  strenuous  en- 
deavors. And  on  the  part  of  the  inventor  him- 
self there  is  need  of  all  the  patience  and  resource 
of  the  designer  of  new  mechanism ;  and  of  other 
qualities,  subtler  far  than  these,  which  it  may  be 
worth  our  while  to  consider  at  this  point. 

The  inventor  in  education  does  not  bring 
before  the  people  a  new  object  which  they  are 
to  look  upon  and  admire  and  use.  The  people 
are  the  very  stuff  of  his  invention,  public  sen- 


136         GOVERNMENT  BY   INFLUENCE 

timent  is  his  atmosphere,  he  is  an  artificer 
of  human  society.  Accordingly  he  must  have, 
many  times  over,  the  patience  of  the  mechanical 
inventor.  He  must  be  willing  to  merge  his  fame 
in  the  larger  life  of  the  invention.  For  if  it  is  a 
real  and  living  invention  he  will  find  that  there 
are  many  collaborators,  and  it  may  take  genera- 
tions to  bring  the  design  to  its  perfection.  In 
education  it  is  generally  true  that  an  invention 
that  is  only  of  one  man  size  is  not  large  enough 
to  last.  Yet  the  work  calls  for  zest  and  courage, 
and  there  is  ground  for  individual  encourage- 
ment. Social  changes  are  accelerated  in  these 
days.  The  single  generation  has,  more  than 
ever,  its  chance  of  striking  an  arc  of  appreciable 
advancement,  and  there  was  never  a  time  when 
one  man  in  his  one  earthly  life  had  a  better  chance 
of  doing  some  work  of  noble  note.  I  believe  the 
spirit  of  educational  invention  can  be  quickened 
among  the  men  of  America,  to  meet  the  larger 
demands  that  are  upon  us.  And  if  this  language 
seems  to  spread  out  shield  and  spear  in  the  house- 
hold of  Lycomedes,  it  is  not  that  I  am  seeking 
Achilles  at  Vassar.  It  should  be  said  rather  that 
the  highly  educated  women  of  America  are  them- 
selves to  have  a  most  important  part  in  this 
educational  quickening.  Indeed,  it  is  not  too 
much  to  hope  that  the  time  is  at  hand  when  our 
men  and  women  will  take  share  and  share  alike 
in  this  work  —  alike  but  different.  And  we  may 


ARE   WE   AN   INVENTIVE   PEOPLE?     137 

trust  and  pray  that  the  great  work  that  our 
women  are  already  doing  in  every  phase  of  social 
improvement  may  not  cause  the  men  of  America 
to  dream  that  their  responsibility  can  be  shifted, 
but  may  rather  remind  them  that  they  must  not 
fail  in  their  part. 

It  may  be  well  to  enter  here  upon  some  brief 
discussion  of  three  or  four  of  the  problems  now 
calling  for  constructive  leadership.  In  the  first 
place,  let  us  make  note  of  an  unfinished  move- 
ment, which  demands  our  best  skill  and  will 
surely  reward  its  exercise.  It  has  been  said  that 
the  education  of  the  school  and  education  by 
apprenticeship,  after  centuries  in  which  they 
have  gone  apart,  are  drawing  near  together  in 
these  days.  It  seems  fair  to  expect,  in  fact,  that 
the  school  of  the  future  will  be  the  result  of  their 
union.  The  combination  appears  in  many  forms. 
Most  familiar  of  these,  up  to  the  present  time, 
is  the  school  laboratory  in  the  natural  sciences. 
Here  instruction  from  the  book  assumes  a  subor- 
dinate place  and  the  pupil  learns  by  what  he 
does.  Already,  too,  the  method  of  the  scientific 
laboratory  is  permeating  other  departments  of 
the  school.  It  has  influenced  the  teaching  of 
history  and  the  languages,  and  we  may  even  see 
its  influence  extending  to  the  teaching  of  law  in 
the  professional  school.  But  now  the  school 
and  the  apprentice  system  are  drawing  together 
in  other  ways.  The  movement  is  obvious  in 
manual  training  and  domestic  education. 


138          GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

The  actual  contact  of  the  two  systems,  how- 
ever, has  been  especially  marked  in  the  past 
two  years.  At  the  Carnegie  Technical  Schools 
in  Pittsburg  arrangements  have  been  entered 
into  by  which  boys  will  take  a  part  of  their 
training  for  certain  trades  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  apprenticeship,  under  the  control  of 
the  trades  unions,  and  another  part  of  their 
training  for  the  same  trades  in  the  technical 
schools.  At  the  University  of  Cincinnati  the 
experiment  is  making  of  combining  work  for 
wages  in  a  regular  shop  with  the  studies  of  an 
engineering  course,  two  young  men  counting 
for  one  in  the  shop  by  alternating  on  one-week 
shifts,  each  taking  his  university  studies  in  the 
week  that  he  is  not  at  the  bench.  The  experi- 
ment is  watched  with  the  liveliest  interest  by 
both  shop  men  and  university  men  and  thus  far 
it  gives  promise  of  success.  In  the  movement 
toward  the  establishment  of  public  trade  schools, 
now  under  way  in  Massachusetts  and  Connecti- 
cut and  in  several  other  states,  the  relation  of  the 
apprenticeship  to  the  school  is  a  question  of  the 
utmost  importance,  both  educationally  and  in 
its  connection  with  the  problems  of  trades  union- 
ism. From  a  general  pedagogical  standpoint  the 
combination  of  the  methods  of  the  literary  school 
with  the  methods  of  apprenticeship  seems  one 
of  the  most  promising  of  present  opportunities 
for  the  exercise  of  educational  invention. 


ARE   WE   AN   INVENTIVE   PEOPLE?      139 

May  I  venture,  in  the  second  place,  to  speak 
of  the  present  problem  in  the  higher  education 
of  women  ?  I  will  not  say  what  I  think  about  the 
subject  here  and  now,  when  I  am  so  happily 
indebted  to  your  generous  hospitality.  I  do  not 
think  you  would  care  to  have  me  indulge  in  the 
language  of  compliment.  But  before  I  came  to 
Vassar,  let  us  say,  the  question  of  woman's 
higher  education  in  America  seemed  to  me  to 
lie  about  as  follows:  That,  after  the  great  ad- 
vance we  have  made  in  this  field,  which  has  com- 
manded the  attention  of  the  world  and  the 
admiration  of  a  good  part  of  the  world,  we  have 
come  to  something  like  a  standstill,  and  some  of 
the  most  important  steps  have  not  been  taken  as 
yet.  It  has  taken  a  great  struggle  to  establish 
fully  the  higher  education  of  woman  as  a  simple 
human  need.  But  that  battle  has  been  won. 
The  integration  of  woman's  education  with  the 
general  scheme  of  education  has  been  brought 
about.  But  the  differentiation  of  woman's  educa- 
tion is  yet  to  be  accomplished.  Let  us  admit 
that  the  task  of  integration  was  by  far  the  greater 
task.  But  does  it  follow  that  the  differentiation 
is  no  task  at  all  ?  Or,  to  put  it  in  other  words : 
The  functions  of  men  and  wromen  in  society  are 
different  in  many  ways.  Do  those  differences  lie 
wholly  beyond  the  range  of  education?  I  am 
confident  that  they  cannot  permanently  be  left 
outside  of  the  range  of  education,  but  the  task 


140          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

of  bringing  them  under  educational  treatment  is 
one  of  the  greatest  difficulty.  It  calls  for  the 
highest  exercise  of  inventive  skill  and  patience. 
In  co-educational  institutions,  under  a  system  of 
free  election,  the  problem  tends  to  solve  itself  by 
the  gravitation  of  women  toward  certain  courses 
and  of  men  toward  certain  other  courses,  while 
still  other  courses  are  common  ground.  But 
this  solution  is  only  partial  and  unsatisfactory. 
Some  practicable  scheme  of  preparation  for 
mother- work  will,  we  cannot  doubt,  be  devised 
in  the  course  of  time.  There  will  be,  some  day, 
an  education  for  home  making  and  for  woman's 
leading  part  in  the  finer  forms  of  social  inter- 
course, which  will  do  on  the  higher  academic 
plane  what  was  done  in  a  more  petty  way,  gener- 
ations ago,  in  popular  finishing  schools  for  girls. 
But  this,  too,  is  only  a  part.  There  is  to  be, 
further,  a  serious  preparation  for  woman's  work 
in  the  economic,  the  industrial,  and  even  the 
political  world.  What  the  all-round  solution  of 
this  problem  will  be,  I  cannot  tell  nor  even  guess. 
But  if  it  meets  the  need,  it  will  be  an  educational 
invention  of  the  highest  order  of  excellence. 

In  the  third  place,  there  is  the  international 
organization  of  education.  Commissioner  Draper 
has  recently  called  attention  to  the  tremendous 
number  of  men  and  women  engaged  in  teach- 
ing throughout  the  world  to-day.  There  are 
not  far  from  three  and  one-half  million  of 


ARE   WE   AN   INVENTIVE   PEOPLE?      141 

them,  according  to  his  estimates.  And  for  the 
most  part  they  are  engaged  in  what  is  essentially 
the  same  work,  wherever  they  may  be.  The  full 
realization  of  the  unity  of  this  great  body  of 
teachers,  when  it  is  attained,  must  have  pro- 
found consequences  for  the  peace  and  civiliza- 
tion of  the  world.  Already  we  are  working  toward 
such  unity  in  a  number  of  definite  and  special 
ways.  Many  of  these  ways  are  already  familiar 
to  all:  The  visits  of  teachers  and  other  educa- 
tional leaders  of  one  country  among  the  schools 
of  other  peoples;  systematic  efforts  of  one 
people  to  spread  a  knowledge  of  their  culture 
and  ideals  among  other  peoples,  as  exemplified 
in  the  Alliance  Fran9aise;  the  exchange  of 
university  professors;  and  a  variety  of  other 
procedure. 

If  the  diplomatic  relations  of  nations  have 
passed  into  an  economic  stage,  it  should  be 
added  that  they  are  passing  into  an  educational 
stage.  Mr.  Barrett,  the  chief  of  the  Bureau  of 
American  Republics,  urges,  with  good  show  of 
reason,  that  if  we  wish  better  commercial  relations 
with  the  proud  and  sensitive  peoples  of  South 
America,  we  must  first  meet  them  on  higher 
ground,  through  an  understanding  and  recogni- 
tion of  their  culture  and  education.  Already  we 
can  see  signs  of  the  emergence  of  world-standards 
in  school  education  and  university  education  and 
particularly  in  professional  education.  It  is  an 


GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

immediate  and  practical  need  that  we  put  our 
higher  education  into  shape  to  deserve,  and  by 
deserving  to  compel,  recognition,  the  world  over, 
of  our  academic  and  professional  degrees.  All 
of  these  things  call  for  new  procedure,  new 
devices,  and  new  co-ordination  of  existing  agen- 
cies. That  is,  in  the  language  of  this  discussion, 
they  call  for  a  new  exercise  of  educational  inven- 
tion in  its  very  widest  range. 

Finally,  the  international  need  emphasizes 
the  national  need.  Such  a  thing  has  happened 
repeatedly  in  the  history  of  international  rela- 
tions. What  we  must  do  to  take  and  keep  our 
place  among  the  nations  of  the  earth,  reveals  to 
us  what  we  must  do  at  home.  No  one  in  his 
senses,  I  am  sure,  would  propose  a  centraliza- 
tion of  American  educational  systems.  But  we 
need  as  never  before  an  effective  co-operation  of 
our  state  educational  organizations,  and  of  our 
institutions  of  learning  under  more  private  forms 
of  control.  And  when  education  is  spoken  of 
here,  the  meaning  is  education  in  its  widest 
reach,  from  the  elementary  schools  through  the 
colleges  and  universities,  from  the  most  general 
to  the  most  special  of  its  developments,  through 
the  several  forms  of  professional  instruction, 
through  organized  scientific  research,  through 
our  provision  for  libraries  and  museums  and 
those  movements  which  promise  for  us  the  mak- 
ing of  a  really  national  art.  The  organization 


ARE  WE  AN   INVENTIVE   PEOPLE?      143 

of  what  may  be  called  our  national  education  in 
a  manner  suited  to  the  spirit  of  our  institutions 
and  in  forms  commensurate  with  our  standing 
among  the  nations  —  this  is  an  undertaking 
which  must  tax  the  imagination  and  make  de- 
mand for  administrative  originality  such  as  the 
academic  world  has  seldom  seen.  But  it  is  a  work 
that  is  to  be  done.  And  it  will  undoubtedly  be 
the  work  of  many  men  and  women,  brought 
together  in  intense  co-operation,  and  be  extended 
far  beyond  the  limits  of  a  single  generation.  It 
will  be  a  work  of  national  invention. 

Such,  as  it  now  appears,  is  some  small  part 
of  the  task  that  lies  immediately  before  us.  It 
is  a  work  that  may  well  call  for  the  most  serious 
consideration  of  this  greatly  influential  society, 
which  aims  to  make  its  philosophy  a  guide  into 
the  larger  life.  The  plea  which  has  been  offered 
amounts  in  sum  to  this :  That  by  all  means  you 
will  give  encouragement  and  stimulus  and  dis- 
criminating criticism  to  our  already  awakened 
spirit  of  educational  invention;  for  it  takes  no 
second  sight  to  perceive  that  the  times  call  for 
the  exercise  of  that  spirit  in  the  highest  things  to 
which  it  may  aspire. 


IX 

CHILDREN  IN   THE  UNITED   STATES: 
SOME   OF  THEIR  NEEDS 

An  Address  delivered  before  the  International  Congress  on 
the  Welfare  of  the  Child  at  Washington,  March, 
1908.  Published  in  the  National  Congress  of  Mothers' 
Magazine,  June,  1908. 


IX 


CHILDREN   IN  THE   UNITED   STATES:    SOME 
OF  THEIR  NEEDS 

THE  President  of  the  United  States,  in 
assigning  to  me  the  high  honor  of  com- 
ing before  you  as  his  representative, 
expressed  his  deep  and  serious  interest  in  your 
undertaking.  To  promote  the  general  welfare 
by  way  of  a  betterment  of  American  childhood 
is,  as  I  understand  it,  the  main  object  of  your  ac- 
tivities. It  is  a  purpose  which,  in  an  especial 
degree,  commands  the  President's  warm  consid- 
eration. In  this  solicitude  all  patriotic  Americans 
must  share.  And  whatever  wise  measures  you 
may  initiate  to  carry  your  high  purpose  into  effect 
cannot  fail  to  find  a  response  in  all  groups  and 
sections  and  parties  of  our  American  people. 

In  particular,  as  a  schoolman  and  a  member 
of  the  National  Education  Association,  may  I 
express  my  personal  gratification  that  the  Moth- 
ers' Congress  is  to  be  one  of  the  organizations 
to  be  represented  in  the  new  Department  of 
National  Organizations  of  Women,  which  was 
authorized  by  the  directors  of  that  association  at 


148         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

their  meeting  last  summer  in  Los  Angeles.  The 
educational  program  of  these  several  women's 
organizations  is  so  well  framed,  and  so  much 
may  be  done  by  them  to  make  that  program 
operative  in  our  educational  systems,  that  your 
participation  in  our  great  National  Association 
brings  to  it  a  promise  of  heightened  usefulness. 
It  is  to  be  hoped  that  you  may  find  your  new 
relations  with  that  association  altogether  helpful 
and  congenial.  May  you  be  greatly  successful 
in  the  educational  projects  to  which  so  much 
of  your  effort  has  been  consecrated.  And  may 
your  meetings  here  in  Washington  happily  further 
your  plans  for  making  a  joyous  childhood  uni- 
versal in  this  land,  as  the  best  introduction  to  an 
honorable  manhood  and  womanhood. 

Your  purpose  is,  indeed,  the  broad  purpose  of 
our  civilization.  We  are  seeking  to  make  a 
childhood  of  wholesome  play  lead  up  to  a  mature 
life  of  wholesome  work  from  which  the  spirit  of 
play  has  not  been  altogether  lost.  We  think  it 
worth  while  to  provide  for  childhood  with  its 
play.  We  think  it  worth  while  to  provide  in  a 
thousand  ways  for  the  work  of  grown-up  years. 
But  just  at  this  time  we  are  chiefly  interested  in 
the  passage  from  the  age  of  play  to  the  age  of 
work.  That  is  the  focus  of  some  of  our  most 
anxious  thought  of  to-day.  The  school  is  largely 
concerned  with  the  transformation  of  a  playing 
child  into  a  working  man  with  some  of  the  play 


CHILDREN   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES     149 

left  in  him.  So  the  question  of  which  I  speak 
is  the  question  of  the  fitting  together  of  the  later 
years  of  school  with  the  earlier  years  of  work. 
Here  is  one  of  the  most  penetrating  questions  of 
our  time,  and  one  to  which  you  may  fairly  de- 
vote your  most  earnest  planning  and  study. 

It  may  not  be  necessary  to  show  the  danger 
of  too  abrupt  a  change  from  one  mode  of  life  to 
another.  That  danger  has  been  often  remarked. 
For  example,  it  has  been  noted  that  the  German 
system  of  higher  education,  under  which  a  stu- 
dent passes  at  one  bound  from  the  close  prescrip- 
tion and  supervision  of  the  gymnasium  into  the 
unlimited  freedom  of  the  university,  is  a  system 
which  subjects  many  a  young  student  to  an  over- 
whelming moral  disadvantage.  Many  lives  are 
undoubtedly  wrecked  in  that  first  year  of  unac- 
customed liberty.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Ger- 
man points  to  the  hard  lot  of  the  American 
volunteer  in  time  of  war.  Without  preparation  of 
any  kind  he  is  plunged  from  a  life  of  peace  into 
the  hardest  realities  of  a  military  life.  It  can- 
not be  denied  that  physically  and  morally  many 
young  men  have  gone  to  pieces  under  such  a 
strain.  But  what  is  to  be  said  of  a  boy  in  his 
teens  or  a  girl  of  the  same  age  who  in  one  day 
passes  from  a  life  in  which  there  is  no  work  to  a 
life  that  is  all  work  ?  The  physical  strain  of 
such  a  transition  is  great,  but  the  moral  strain  is 
worse.  Yet  exactly  the  strain  of  such  sudden 


150          GOVERNMENT  BY   INFLUENCE 

change  is  what  we  have  to  guard  against  in  the 
interest  of  great  numbers  of  our  people. 

Where  our  population  is  densely  concentrated 
and  the  struggle  for  a  living  is  hard,  where  in- 
dustry is  organized  in  enormous  units,  in  facto- 
ries and  mines,  and  laborers  are  counted  by  the 
thousands  or  the  tens  of  thousands,  there  the 
danger  rises  to  its  highest  pitch.  In  a  more  scat- 
tered population  and  under  industrial  conditions 
of  an  earlier  type,  the  danger  is  less  threatening. 
There,  in  many  individual  instances,  we  may 
still  see  the  passage  from  school  and  play  to 
grown-up  life  and  work  accomplished  in  ways 
that  are  wholesome  and  very  good  to  contemplate. 

It  is  natural  for  us  to  go  back  in  thought  to  the 
course  of  our  own  lives.  I  trust  I  may  be  par- 
doned, accordingly,  if  I  appeal  for  illustration  to 
my  own  personal  recollections.  They  take  me 
back  to  a  childhood  on  the  farm  and  in  a  country 
village  in  northern  Illinois.  Before  I  was  ten 
years  old  my  village  life  had  begun.  Before  I 
was  eleven  the  ambition  was  moving  me  to  take 
some  share  in  the  family  burdens.  I  could  see 
already  that  those  burdens  were  pressing  heavily 
on  the  father  and  mother.  Our  family  life  was  an 
intimate  one.  We  were  all  partners  in  the  family 
fortunes.  I  had  my  regular  round  of  small  duties, 
known  as  chores,  but  I  was  eager  to  earn  money 
and  pay  my  part  of  the  costs.  So  it  came  about 
that  it  was  my  own  desire  and  no  urgency  what- 


CHILDREN   IN  THE   UNITED   STATES     151 

ever  on  the  part  of  my  parents  that  made  me  a 
wage-earner  in  my  eleventh  year.  After  anxious 
searching  and  inquiry  I  found  employment  in  the 
village,  which  did  not  interfere  with  the  hours  of 
school;  in  vacation  time  I  began  working  on 
neighboring  farms ;  and  before  the  year  was  out 
I  had  assumed  the  full  responsibility  of  keeping 
myself  in  clothes.  By  a  happy  provision  of  na- 
ture, as  I  grew  taller  and  it  cost  more  to  clothe 
me,  I  grew  also  stronger  and  my  earning  power 
increased.  It  was  a  proud  moment  when  my 
wages  were  advanced  from  fifty  to  seventy-five 
cents  a  day. 

At  a  later  time  the  home  place  grew  larger,  and 
I  was  needed  there  to  do  my  part  with  other 
laborers.  So  I  ceased  to  earn  an  independent  in- 
come, and  once  more  I  was  clothed  from  the 
family  purse.  Thus,  with  various  alternations  of 
work  and  schooling,  and  later  with  short  terms 
of  teaching  school,  the  time  went  on  until  I  was 
prepared  to  enter  regularly  upon  my  chosen 
profession. 

It  was  a  happy  life,  on  the  whole,  There  was 
a  fair  amount  of  play  in  it,  and  I  enjoyed  the  play 
a  good  deal  more  than  the  work.  But  there  was 
interest,  too,  and  pride  in  the  work.  The  rest  of 
the  household  were  doing  their  part.  There  were 
warm  neighborhood  relationships.  And  in  the 
home  there  was  music  and  reading,  with  table-talk 
of  politics,  history,  religion,  and  the  daily  news. 


152         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

It  is  plain  to  see  that  mine  was  not  an  isolated 
case.  In  many  parts  of  the  country  it  may  be 
duplicated  with  ten  thousand  variations  to  this 
day.  Numerous  records  parallel  with  this,  to  all 
intents  and  purposes,  may  be  found  in  the  Con- 
gressional Directory.  And  if  Who 's  Who  gave 
biographical  details  concerning  the  first  twenty 
years  in  the  life  of  each  of  its  inmates,  such  in- 
stances might  be  multiplied  almost  indefinitely. 

Let  me  repeat  that  the  point  to  which  attention 
is  here  particularly  directed  is  the  overlapping, 
or  let  us  say  the  dovetailing,  of  school  life  with  the 
life  of  a  wage-earner  and  producer.  Such  over- 
lapping belongs  to  certain  years  between  the  ages 
of  twelve  and  twenty-one.  Leaving  out  of  consid- 
eration now  that  small  percentage  of  our  people 
for  whom  schooling  is  still  the  main  occupation 
of  life  for  some  years  past  the  age  of  twenty-one, 
and  speaking  only  of  that  greater  number  who 
have  gom  over  to  a  life  of  labor  before  they  have 
reached  their  majority,  and  many  of  them  long 
before,  I  would  present  for  your  consideration 
this  view :  That  for  that  larger  proportion  of  our 
number  ways  should  be  sought  by  which  their 
school  life  may  be  dovetailed  into  their  life  of 
toil.  For  one  or  two  years  at  least,  and  preferably 
for  a  longer  time,  after  the  law  permits  them  to 
work  for  pay,  some  part  of  their  time  should  still 
be  reserved  for  school.  The  ways  by  which  this 
may  be  accomplished  will  be  various,  and  some 


CHILDREN   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES     153 

of  them  are  still  to  be  discovered.  But,  by  what- 
ever ways  may  yet  be  found  available,  we  must 
seek  to  prevent  the  sharp  break  from  school  life 
to  a  life  of  hard  and  unremitting  labor,  which  is 
now  too  often  the  lot  of  boys  and  girls  at  the 
fourteenth,  fifteenth,  or  sixteenth  year  of  their 
age. 

The  more  gradual  and  irregular  transition  of 
which  my  own  boyhood  is  an  ordinary  example  is 
in  some  ways  better  than  any  arrangement  wilich 
can  be  deliberately  provided,  on  a  large  scale,  by 
legislation  and  administrative  procedure.  But  in 
some  ways  it  is  not  so  good.  There  are  surely 
methods  to  be  found  by  which  a  closer  interaction 
may  be  brought  about  between  the  schooling  and 
the  labor.  Each  may  be  made  to  give  support  to 
the  other.  Our  national  inventiveness  should  be 
equal  to  the  demand  for  educational  adjustments 
to  meet  this  rising  need.  Already,  in  fact,  such 
devices  have  begun  to  appear.  In  the  great  agri- 
cultural states  of  the  West,  many  boys  and  young 
men  are  dividing  their  time  between  farm  work 
in  summer  and  studies  in  agricultural  schools  and 
colleges  in  winter.  In  the  cities  there  are  robust 
and  ambitious  young  people  who,  even  after  full 
days  of  labor,  give  their  evenings  to  attendance 
on  evening  schools.  There  are  department  stores 
in  which  a  part  of  the  time  of  the  younger  em- 
ployees is  given  to  school  pursuits  in  school  rooms 
provided  by  their  employers.  At  the  University 


154         GOVERNMENT   BY  INFLUENCE 

of  Cincinnati  and  the  Carnegie  Technical  Schools 
in  Pittsburg,  young  men  and  boys  divide  their 
time  between  an  apprenticeship  in  the  shop  and 
theoretical  study  in  the  class  room.  These 
varied  experiments  may  be  regarded  as  the  skir- 
mish line  of  an  advance  which  is  to  be  of  great 
significance  for  our  national  character  and  well- 
being.  It  is  not  too  much  to  hope  that  laws  may 
be  devised  and  plans  of  organization  carried  into 
effect  that  will  make  a  midway  period,  in  which 
part  schooling  is  required  and  part  time  labor  is 
permitted,  one  of  the  most  fruitful  periods  in  all 
the  educational  years  of  youth.  I  do  not  look  to 
see  such  a  movement  fall  short  of  this  consum- 
mation :  That  for  all  of  our  people  there  shall  be 
schooling  of  some  sort  and  in  some  amount 
through  all  the  years  up  to  the  age  of  twenty-one ; 
and  that  this  schooling  in  its  later  years  shall  have 
a  more  intimate  bearing  on  the  duties  and  occu- 
pations of  life  than  we  have  yet  been  able  to 
accomplish. 

But  while  we  hold  such  hopes  and  expectations 
in  all  confidence,  it  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that  the 
immediate  task  is  that  of  securing  wise  laws  for 
compulsory  education,  joined  with  compulsory 
abstinence  from  unsuitable  wage-earning  work. 
There  is  clearly  this  need  that  the  right  to  an 
education  and  freedom  from  those  industrial 
conditions  which  would  ruin  the  good  results  of 
education  should  both  be  provided  by  law.  Of 


CHILDREN   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES     155 

our  forty-six  states,  thirty-five  have  now  on  their 
statute  books  laws  varying  greatly  in  their  scope, 
for  the  accomplishment  of  both  of  these  purposes ; 
on  the  other  hand,  one  state  has  no  laws  for 
either  of  these  purposes,  and  nine  have  either 
child  labor  laws  or  laws  for  compulsory  education 
alone.  The  District  of  Columbia  is  not  a  satis- 
factory model  for  the  rest  of  the  country,  for  its 
improved  statute  for  compulsory  education  is  not 
yet  matched  with  a  statute  for  the  regulation  of 
child  labor.  This  is  a  gap  which  it  is  hoped  the 
present  Congress  will  supply.1 

Now,  taking  account  only  of  those  states  in 
which  there  are  both  compulsory  education  laws 
and  child  labor  laws  side  by  side,  let  us  note  the 
relation  between  the  close  of  the  compulsory  edu- 
cation period  and  the  beginning  of  the  permissive 
labor  period.  Some  of  our  child  labor  laws  assign 
different  ages  for  different  occupations,  and  none 
of  them  apply  to  all  possible  occupations.  But 
speaking  broadly,  the  present  status  of  the  case 
is  about  as  follows:  In  eighteen  of  the  states 
these  two  points  coincide,  that  is,  full-time  em- 
ployment is  permitted  the  day  after  full-time 
compulsory  education  ceases.  In  one  of  the  states 
there  is  a  gap  of  two  years  between  the  two.  For 
many  children  such  a  gap  is  a  period  of  danger,  a 
much  more  serious  danger,  indeed,  than  that  of 
the  sudden  step  from  school  to  gainful  employ- 

1  Congress  has  passed  a  child  labor  law  since  this  was  written. 


156         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

ment;  for  children  who  may  not  take  employ- 
ment for  wages  and  are  not  required  to  go  to 
school  are  subject  to  all  of  the  evils  of  enforced 
idleness  at  an  age  when  impulse  is  strong  and 
control  is  weak  and  characters  are  ready  to  take 
their  bent  for  life.  In  seven  of  the  states  this 
danger  is  met  by  a  provision  extending  the  age  of 
compulsory  school  attendance  in  the  case  of  chil- 
dren having  no  regular  employment.  In  the  re- 
maining seventeen  of  these  states  there  is  some 
form  of  overlapping  of  the  compulsory  schooling 
age  and  the  permissive  employment  age.  In  these 
seventeen  states  there  would  seem,  even  at  the 
present  time,  to  be  a  fair  opportunity  for  judicious 
experimentation  with  ways  of  making  a  better 
transition  from  the  school  to  the  work  of  life. 

More  and  more,  however,  it  becomes  clear  that 
statutory  provisions  in  these  matters  are  not 
effective  without  well-developed  systems  of  in- 
spection and  enforcement.  And  if  the  best  things 
are  to  be  brought  within  reach,  the  enforcement 
of  compulsory  education  laws  must  go  hand  in 
hand  with  the  enforcement  of  compulsory  non- 
labor  laws.  Such  combined  efficiency  is  abso- 
lutely essential  if  the  ends  of  which  I  have  spoken 
are  to  be  attained.  With  adequate  guarantees  on 
the  sanitary  and  the  educational  side,  it  would  be 
practicable,  for  many  children  in  the  middle  of 
their  'teens,  to  place  the  school  alongside  of  the 
factory  or  the  shop,  even  under  the  same  roof,  and 


CHILDREN   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES     157 

to  have  the  pupils  divide  their  time  between  the 
two.  It  is  conceivable  that  such  an  arrangement 
might  be  made  of  incalculable  advantage,  not 
only  to  industry  but  equally  to  education.  But 
it  should  not  be  considered  for  a  moment  without 
those  adequate  guarantees.  In  every  way  it  would 
appear  that  any  great  progress  in  these  matters 
is  dependent  upon  a  full  and  harmonious  devel- 
opment of  our  systems  of  enforcement.  It  will 
be  safe  to  make  the  laws  flexible,  to  adapt  them  to 
a  great  variety  of  conditions,  in  proportion  as  their 
administration  becomes  exact  and  dependable. 
To  strengthen  these  provisions  on  the  adminis- 
trative side  is  accordingly  one  of  our  chief  con- 
cerns at  this  time ;  and  this  is  notably  the  case,  I 
may  repeat,  if  any  such  intimate  combination  of 
industry  and  education  as  is  here  proposed  for  a 
transition  period  is  to  be  made  a  safe  and  sane 
and  practicable  undertaking. 

Passing  now  from  this  more  special  considera- 
tion of  the  transition  period  in  the  lives  of  our 
future  workers,  permit  me  to  remind  you  of  the 
present  urgency  of  the  whole  problem  of  our 
school  attendance.  After  all  of  the  efforts  that 
have  been  put  forth  —  compulsory  attendance 
laws,  varied  attractions  in  the  studies  offered,  and 
public  opinion  pressing  upon  indifferent  parents 
-  our  school  attendance  is  still  far  behind  what 
it  should  be.  At  a  fair  estimate  every  one  of  our 
people  should  receive  at  least  eight  years  of  school- 


158          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

ing  of  approximately  two  hundred  days  to  the 
year.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  fall  far  short  of  this 
standard.  In  the  year  1905  the  average  schooling 
per  individual  of  the  population  for  the  whole 
country  was  only  5.33  years.  In  the  North  At- 
lantic Division,  including  the  New  England  and 
Middle  Atlantic  states,  this  average  went  as  high 
as  7.09  years.  In  the  South  Central  Division  it 
was  only  3.06  years.  In  both  cases  it  was  far  too 
low,  and  it  is  evident  that  a  great  task  is  still 
before  us  to  bring  this  amount  up  to  anything  like 
the  point  that  it  should  reach.  When  we  try  to 
realize  the  meaning  of  the  figures,  to  understand 
how  many  children  have  been  kept  from  their 
educational  inheritance,  we  are  oppressed  with 
the  waste  of  warm,  human  life  and  opportunity 
which  such  a  showing  signifies.  Yet  the  figures 
offer  encouragement,  too.  While  the  present 
averages  are  painfully  low,  they  represent  a  long- 
continued  improvement.  The  showing  of  an 
average  of  5.33  years  of  schooling  per  individual 
of  the  population  in  the  year  1905  should  be  set 
over  against  an  average  of  3.96  years  in  the  year 
1880.  This  advance  of  35  per  cent  within  the 
term  of  twenty-five  years  is  a  notable  gain  when 
we  remember  that  the  total  number  of  persons  to 
be  educated  had  increased  at  a  rapid  rate  within 
the  same  period.  In  the  South  Central  Division, 
which  shows  the  lowest  average  at  this  time,  the 
improvement  has  been  notably  rapid,  amount- 


CHILDREN   IN  THE   UNITED    STATES     159 

ing  to  65  per  cent  within  this  twenty-five-year 
period. 

When  we  turn  from  the  figures  for  broad 
sections  of  our  land  to  a  closer  examination  of  rep- 
resentative cities,  we  find  both  stimulus  and  en- 
couragement in  another  form.  Here  we  have  the 
significant  tables  recently  prepared  by  Professor 
Thorndike  to  show  the  dwindling  of  public  school 
classes  from  the  lower  to  the  higher  grades  of  the 
school.  The  showing  here  is  disheartening  if  we 
consider  only  such  facts  as  these :  That  one-half 
of  the  pupils,  generally  speaking,  have  left  school 
before  the  eighth  grade  is  reached,  and  only  40 
per  cent  go  through  to  the  end  of  the  elementary 
school.  But  when,  on  the  other  hand,  we  see 
what  progress  some  of  our  cities  have  made,  we 
take  new  courage  for  the  rest.  While  in  the 
mean  or  average  the  cities  show  over  half  of  the 
pupils  dropping  out  before  the  eighth  grade  is 
entered,  twelve  cities  out  of  twenty-three  already 
carry  more  than  half  of  their  pupils  through  the 
seventh  grade,  seven  carry  more  than  half  of  them 
through  the  eighth  grade,  and  two,  at  least,  carry 
a  majority  of  their  pupils  through  the  ninth 
grade  and  over  into  the  high  school.  There  is 
reason,  then,  for  solicitude,  and  reason  as  well 
for  hope.1 

1  Since  the  above  was  written,  Professor  Thorndike 's  re- 
sults have  been  sharply  criticised,  but  even  the  figures  pre- 
sented by  Mr.  Leonard  P.  Ayres,  one  of  the  keenest  of  the 


160         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

What  one  city  or  a  few  cities  have  done 
other  cities  may  do.  This  is  the  word  to  be 
passed  on  to  those  parents'  associations  in  con- 
nection with  public  schools  which  the  Mothers' 
Congress  has  promoted  —  a  form  of  association 
of  the  greatest  promise  in  the  way  of  educational 
improvement.  All  manner  of  co-operation  and 
moral  influence  must  be  added  to  all  manner  of 
legal  and  administrative  compulsion  to  bring 
about  the  desirable  uplift  of  our  schools  in  this 
matter  of  attendance.  But  such  combination  of 
favoring  influence  has  even  now  accomplished 
notable  improvements,  which  have  been  seen  and 
measured  and  recorded.  So  much  the  more  may 
we  expect  that  the  efforts  of  the  immediate  future 
will  have  their  wished-for  reward. 

The  point  cannot  be  too  strongly  emphasized 
that  the  importance  of  these  various  statistics  lies 
in  the  human  values  that  they  represent.  We 
are  concerned  with  the  difference  that  it  makes 
in  a  human  life  to  have  eight  full  years  of  school- 
ing in  a  good  school,  as  compared  with  three  or 
four  fragmentary  years  in  some  half-organized 
makeshift  for  a  school,  or  even  less  than  that  and 
with  no  school  at  all.  We  are  concerned  with 
these  values  in  individual  lives,  and  we  are  look- 
ing beyond  to  the  great  interests  of  the  corn- 
critics  (Laggards  in  our  schools,  pp.  66-72)  show  only  about 
fifty  per  cent  of  the  pupils  completing  the  elementary  school 


course. 


CHILDREN   IN  THE   UNITED   STATES     161 

mon wealth  and  the  nation.  As  regards  school 
attendance  and  child  labor  and  all  of  those  high 
interests  to  which  your  organization  has  devoted 
its  attention,  these  human  values,  these  state  and 
national  interests,  come  before  us  with  compelling 
power. 

These  interests  cannot  fall  short  of  a  national 
significance,  for  it  is  the  oncoming  citizenship 
of  the  nation  with  which  they  have  to  do. 
The  nation  cannot  look  with  unconcern  on  those 
things  that  affect  its  fundamental  character  and 
endurance.  It  is  not  my  purpose  here  to  discuss 
any  of  the  ways  which  have  been  proposed  to  give 
effect  to  the  national  concern  in  these  matters 
through  governmental  action.  I  shall  do  no  more 
than  express  my  conviction  that  this  national 
concern  is  too  deep  and  genuine  to  fail  of  finding 
suitable  expression.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  for 
a  moment  that  the  nation  will  do  aught  to  weaken 
the  hands  of  the  states  in  dealing  with  the  present 
situation.  But  the  nation  has  much  to  do  that 
will  strengthen  the  hands  of  the  states,  and  will 
work  to  the  betterment  of  that  great  body  of 
young  citizens  who  are  the  hope  alike  of  the 
states  and  of  the  nation. 

The  great  need  is  that  the  opportunity  for 
sound  growth  and  education  shall  be  equalized 
for  our  children  and  our  youth  throughout  the 
land.  If  opportunity  is  the  very  thing  that  our 
democracy  means,  then  we  must  realize  democ- 

11 


162         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

racy,  as  far  as  possible,  by  making  the  opportunity 
of  the  child  born  in  one  part  of  the  land  as  fair 
and  encouraging  as  that  of  the  child  born  in  any 
other  part  of  the  land.  This,  in  large  part,  must 
be  the  responsibility  of  governments,  both  state 
and  national.  But  as  preparatory  to  govern- 
mental provisions,  and  as  holding  the  ground  till 
governments  can  act  with  full  effect,  there  is  a 
great  work  to  be  done  by  private  and  co-opera- 
tive agencies.  And  when  governments  have  done 
their  best  there  will  still  be  large  responsibilities 
devolving  on  such  agencies.  Your  influential 
society  and  other  women's  societies  that  share  in 
these  undertakings  —  they  can  do  much  to  fur- 
ther that  equalizing  of  opportunity  which  our 
America  still  so  sorely  needs. 

Thus  far  we  have  considered  the  interests  of 
children  in  the  United  States  with  reference, 
first,  to  the  connection  of  school  life  with  life  in 
the  world  of  work,  and  in  the  second  place  to  the 
whole  question  of  attendance  upon  the  schools. 
Before  I  close  may  I  go  back  to  that  earlier  and 
still  more  difficult  problem,  which  has  been  given 
a  prominent  place  among  the  aims  and  purposes 
of  this  Congress,  the  problem  of  preparation  for 
mother- work?  I  would  not  venture  to  advise 
you  with  reference  to  an  education  which  should 
fit  women  for  their  part  as  mothers  in  the  home. 
That  is  a  high  theme  in  which  others  may  learn 
from  you.  What  I  should  like  to  urge  upon 


CHILDREN   IN  THE   UNITED   STATES     163 

your  consideration  is  a  narrower  and  lowlier 
calling,  yet  one  which  may  conceivably  become 
of  large  significance  in  the  life  of  our  people. 

Under  modern  conditions  there  is  need  for  a 
great  deal  of  mothering  by  those  who  are  not 
mothers  themselves,  a  need  for  foster-mothering, 
if  the  term  may  be  permitted.  In  orphanages, 
in  day  nurseries,  in  social  settlements,  in  homes 
from  which  the  mother  has  been  taken,  or  in 
which  the  living  mother  is  unable  to  carry  all 
the  burdens  of  her  position,  there  is  to-day  a 
wide  demand  for  the  services  of  young  women 
who  are  expert  in  the  care  of  little  children  from 
the  first  month  of  babyhood  to  the  age  for  kinder- 
garten or  school.  This  demand  is  met  for  the 
most  part  by  those  who  have  had  no  special 
training  for  the  task,  because  such  special  train- 
ing is  nowhere  to  be  found.  We  have  trained 
kindergartners  and  trained  hospital  nurses.  Some 
little  beginning  has  been  made  in  the  training  of 
nursery  maids  at  babies'  hospitals.  In  Ghent 
and  Paris  and  London  there  are  schools  for 
mothers  among  the  very  poor.  But  none  of 
these  exactly  meet  the  case.  What  is  proposed, 
in  effect,  is  this:  That  as  in  recent  years  the 
profession  of  kindergartner  and  the  profession  of 
hospital  nurse  have  been  created,  so  now  an- 
other new  profession  for  women  be  established, 
the  profession  of  babies'  nurse  or  nursery  gov- 
erness. As  a  profession  it  would  require  its 


164         GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

training  schools,  its  professional  literature,  its 
societies  maintaining  a  professional  spirit  and 
atmosphere.  The  training  would,  in  part,  re- 
semble that  of  the  hospital  nurse,  in  part  it 
would  draw  near  to  that  of  the  kindergartner, 
in  part  it  would  be  different  from  either,  a  special 
training  for  this  new  profession  alone.  A  lead- 
ing place  should  necessarily  be  given  to  the  care 
of  the  little  ones'  health  and  particularly  to  the 
problem  of  nourishment.  But  there  should  be 
a  place,  too,  for  the  principles  of  baby  education, 
which  might  consist  mainly  of  the  prevention  of 
too  much  education  and  the  securing  of  a  healthy 
nervous  system,  capable  of  standing  the  strain 
that  school  life  will  put  upon  it  in  after  years. 

There  is,  however,  no  need  to  elaborate  de- 
tails, for  these  in  any  case  must  be  supplied  for 
the  most  part  by  the  teaching  of  experience.  So 
far  as  the  main  contention  is  concerned,  I  am 
persuaded  that  there  is  room  for  this  new  pro- 
fession and  that  it  will  quickly  make  a  place  for 
itself  as  soon  as  a  school  for  such  training  is  pro- 
vided. In  commending  such  a  plan  to  your 
consideration  let  me  add  that  the  largest  useful- 
ness of  schools  for  foster-mothers  would  un- 
doubtedly come  in  time  to  be  their  indirect 
service  —  their  returning  wave  of  influence  upon 
that  subtler  and  more  difficult  preparation  for 
real  motherhood.  That  there  should  be  schools 
and  a  profession  in  which  the  varied  knowledge 


CHILDREN   IN  THE  UNITED   STATES     165 

needed  for  the  care  of  the  youngest  children  is 
regularly  assembled  and  communicated  —  such  a 
circumstance  could  not  fail  to  have  the  deepest 
interest  for  mothers  everywhere,  who  have  the 
most  intense  and  personal  desire  to  know  what 
may  be  known  for  their  children's  good.  To 
give  form  and  coherence  and  practical  effec- 
tiveness to  the  knowledge  of  baby  life  and  the 
life  of  the  little  child,  even  though  it  were  done 
in  the  first  instance  for  the  training  only  of  nurses, 
would  be  in  the  end  a  service  rendered  to  all 
motherhood. 

It  is  with  the  greatest  diffidence  and  deference 
that  I  bring  these  few  suggestions  to  you,  upon 
whom  the  real  responsibilities  and  honors  of 
mother- work  have  rested.  You  will  undoubtedly 
devise  wise  and  liberal  things  for  the  children 
of  our  land,  for  no  one  feels  their  needs  more 
keenly  than  you,  or  seeks  more  earnestly  to  supply 
those  needs.  Knowing  the  full  weight  of  anxious 
care  for  your  own,  you  have  learned  to  care  for 
the  good  of  all  those  who  are  under  the  simple, 
common,  universal  need  of  childhood  through- 
out the  land.  And  we  who  must  bear  those 
burdens  in  other  ways  come  to  you,  deeply  mind- 
ful of  all  that  the  ministry  of  mother  and  of  wife 
have  meant  in  our  own  homes,  and  look  to  you 
with  confidence  for  help  in  those  large  under- 
takings for  the  welfare  of  all  children  with  which 
our  state  and  national  governments  have  to  do. 


X 

TRAINING  FOR  MOTHER-WORK 

An  Address  delivered  under  the  title.  The  Relation  of  the 
Home  to  Moral  and  Religious  Education,  before  the 
Religious  Education  Association  at  its  Meeting  in 
Rochester,  New  York,  February  6,  1907.  Published 
under  that  title  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Association, 
and  under  the  present  title  in  The  Independent,  April 
18,  1907. 


X 

TRAINING  FOR  MOTHER-WORK 

EVERY  improvement  in  education  involves 
many  factors,  and,  in  the  discussion  of 
the  plan  proposed  in  this  paper,  I  shall 
find  it  necessary  to  make  occasional  digressions 
with  a  view  to  noting  some  of  the  attendant  cir- 
cumstances which  seem  to  me  to  condition  any 
successful    experiment   in    the    field   we  are  to 
consider. 

I  find  it  necessary,  in  fact,  to  begin  with  a  di- 
gression. Attention  should  be  called  at  the  outset 
to  the  extreme  difficulty  of  making  effective  any 
really  new  departure  in  education.  Every  new 
educational  process  or  institution  shows  in  a 
marked  degree  the  same  conservative  tendency 
which  made  the  first  railway  coaches  take  the 
form  of  the  stage-coach,  which  they  superseded, 
until  they  had  developed  slowly  and  painfully 
new  forms  of  their  own ;  the  tendency  which  made 
some  of  the  earlier  experiments  in  the  use  of  iron 
and  steel  in  architectural  construction  take  the 
form  of  columns  and  pilasters  cast  in  the  mould 
of  the  old  Greek  orders.  This  tendency  to  as- 


170         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

similate  the  new  to  the  old,  in  such  a  way  as  to 
delay  or  even  defeat  the  purpose  of  the  new, 
takes  on  a  special  phase  in  the  domain  of  edu- 
cation. The  success  of  the  school  depends  upon 
the  teacher.  When  a  new  type  of  school  is  pro- 
jected, there  are  generally  at  hand  few  teachers, 
if  even  a  single  teacher,  who  possess  the  requisite 
combination  of  training,  experience,  and  a  clear 
conception  of  the  new  purpose,  to  do  the  new 
work  effectively.  The  problem  of  bringing  a 
new  educational  plan  into  full  force  and  effect 
is  accordingly  the  problem  of  getting  the  new 
purpose  clearly  in  mind,  and  then  of  provid- 
ing the  requisite  training  and  apprenticeship 
for  the  teachers  who  will  do  the  work.  So  far 
as  the  teachers  are  concerned,  the  difficulty  rises 
even  to  a  difficulty  in  the  second  degree;  for 
if  the  new  work  is  to  be  widely  extended,  one 
must  consider  not  only  the  question  of  the  supply 
of  teachers,  but  the  question  of  providing  teach- 
ers of  teachers. 

For  reasons  which  will  appear  later  in  this  dis- 
cussion, I  should  like  now  to  limit  my  topic  to  a 
very  small  division  of  the  general  field.  For  the 
present,  let  us  leave  altogether  out  of  considera- 
tion the 'great  majority  of  our  American  homes, 
in  which  the  burden  of  the  earliest  physical  care 
and  moral  and  religious  training  of  the  children 
will  rest  almost  exclusively  upon  the  mother  of 
the  family,  and  concern  ourselves  simply  with 


TRAINING   FOR   MOTHER-WORK        171 

those  homes  in  which  a  children's  nurse  or  gov- 
erness is  employed.  That  is,  I  should  like  to 
consider  the  question  at  first  merely  as  a  question 
concerning  the  training  of  nurses  for  very  young 
children.  At  first  sight,  it  will  seem  that  this  is 
limiting  the  question  to  one  affecting  the  homes 
of  the  rich.  I  should  say  rather  that  it  is  limiting 
the  question  to  one  affecting  the  homes  of  the  rich, 
motherless  homes,  and  the  homes  of  the  very 
poor ;  for  with  the  development  of  a  great  vari- 
ety of  college  and  neighborhood  "settlements" 
in  our  large  cities,  and  with  the  increasing 
clearness  of  educational  purpose  in  institutions 
for  orphans  and  other  unfortunate  children, 
the  range  of  employment  for  such  children's 
nurses  as  I  have  in  mind  will  undoubtedly  be 
very  greatly  extended.  In  this  we  find  a  parallel 
in  the  history  of  American  kindergartens.  Before 
the  kindergarten  becomes  a  part  of  the  public 
school  system,  it  exists  in  two  forms:  as  an  in- 
stitution for  the  children  of  the  rich  (the  "pay" 
kindergarten)  and  an  institution  for  the  children 
of  the  very  poor  (the  free  kindergarten).  In 
more  ways  than  one,  indeed,  the  plan  which  I 
am  venturing  to  propose  will  have  somewhat 
the  character  of  a  downward  extension  of  the 
kindergarten  into  the  earliest  years  of  the  life  of 
the  child. 

But  this  is  not  all.     It  is  to  be  remembered 
that  the  moral  education  of  very  young  children 


172         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

is  most  intimately  bound  up  with  their  physical 
welfare.  In  fact,  the  question  of  survival  and 
of  physical  health  must  be  kept  at  the  front  in 
this  earliest  period,  and  the  beginnings  which 
are  made  at  this  time  in  the  cultivation  of  a  gen- 
erally wholesome  disposition,  and  of  those  regular 
habits  in  eating,  sleeping,  and  related  activities 
which  have  much  to  do  with  the  welfare  of  the 
nervous  system,  are  at  the  same  time  both  physi- 
cal and  moral.  It  is  accordingly  desirable  that 
in  training  for  this  service  we  should  break  away 
from  the  narrower  traditions  of  the  kindergarten. 
Many  good  precedents  may  be  drawn  from  the 
training  of  nurses  in  hospitals  and  sanitariums, 
but  even  such  precedents  must  be  used  with 
caution. 

It  is  to  our  purpose,  however,  to  note  the  en- 
couragement which  may  be  drawn  for  such  an 
undertaking  as  this  from  the  history  of  the 
education  of  nurses  in  this  country.  Within  the 
memory  of  those  here  present,  the  nurse  called 
in  to  help  when  the  household  had  been  invaded 
by  long-continued  illness  was  either  a  neighbor 
or  a  servant.  Except  in  a  few  hospitals,  the 
trained  nurse,  as  we  now  understand  the  term, 
was  unknown.  The  occupation  was  lacking  in 
definite  standards.  Those  who  followed  it 
lacked  professional  spirit  or  other  esprit  de  corps. 
Now  these  conditions  are  rapidly  changing,  and 
the  schools  for  nurses  are  bringing  about  the 


TRAINING   FOR   MOTHER-WORK        173 

change.  In  the  year  1901  there  were  448  of 
these  schools  reporting  to  the  Bureau  of  Educa- 
tion, with  an  attendance  of  11,599  students. 
Five  years  later,  these  numbers  had  increased 
to  964  schools  and  about  20,000  students.  These 
schools  are  rapidly  advancing  their  standards  of 
admission  and  of  scholastic  and  practical  train- 
ing. Already  the  best  of  them  are  worthy  of 
attentive  study  from  the  point  of  view  of  our 
normal  schools,  because  of  their  handling  of  the 
persistent  normal  school  problem,  that  of  the 
union  of  theory  with  practice.  The  nurses  have 
their  associations,  their  periodical  and  other 
publications.  In  ten  states  laws  have  been 
passed  for  their  registration.  In  the  state  of 
New  York,  in  particular,  under  the  administra- 
tion of  the  department  of  education,  the  course 
of  training  provided  in  different  schools  has  been 
unified  and  strengthened.  If  nursing  is  not  a 
profession  as  medicine  is  a  profession,  it  has 
come  to  have  something  of  the  professional 
character  and  spirit.  And  the  public  is  greatly 
the  gainer  by  the  change. 

It  is  one  great  merit  of  a  vocational  school  of 
any  kind  that  it  stamps  this  professional  character 
upon  the  occupation  for  which  it  prepares.  By 
professional  character,  I  mean  that  ingrained 
regard  for  standards  and  ideas,  for  special  knowl- 
edge and  special  skill,  which  marks  the  profes- 
sional man ;  and  his  readiness  to  put  the  claims 


174          GOVERNMENT    BY    INFLUENCE 

of  public  service  and  of  intrinsic  excellence  of 
performance  above  considerations  of  private 
gain.  As  compared  with  any  kind  of  apprentice- 
ship, a  vocational  school  makes  for  such  profes- 
sional spirit,  by  combining  the  instruction  of 
specialists  in  different  fields,  by  referring  proces- 
ses to  guiding  ideas  and  cultivating  practice  in 
its  connection  with  theory,  by  organizing  a  co- 
herent course  of  training,  by  making  a  center  of 
information  relating  to  recent  improvements  in 
its  particular  craft. 

Not  only  does  the  school  prepare  for  the  vo- 
cation more  quickly  and  more  thoroughly  than 
any  ordinary  form  of  apprenticeship,  but  it 
tends  to  improve  more  rapidly  in  its  methods 
and  appliances.  If  schools  for  nurses  of  the  sick 
have  raised  an  irregular  occupation  into  some- 
thing so  like  a  profession  as  we  have  seen  them 
do  within  these  few  past  years,  it  seems  not 
incredible  that  schools  for  the  nurses  of  little 
children  may  do  as  much  within  as  brief  a  period. 
It  is  the  establishment  of  such  schools,  or  of 
special  courses  for  this  purpose  in  universities 
and  other  institutions,  that  is  proposed  in  this 
discussion. 

The  difficulties  to  be  met  in  the  making  of 
such  schools  are  undoubtedly  very  great.  The 
baby  nurse  of  to-day  is  ordinarily  a  servant,  and 
often  a  foreigner  chosen  because  her  speech  is 
that  of  Paris  or  Hanover,  It  would  seem  ajs 


TRAINING    FOR   MOTHER-WORK       175 

if  the  superficial  demand  were  for  the  right 
accent  rather  than  for  skill  in  the  care  and  nur- 
ture of  the  little  ones.  The  real  demand  is  for 
a  variety  of  knowledge  and  of  judgment.  Nu- 
trition, the  prevention  of  disease,  proper  care  in 
minor  ailments  (for  the  nurse  for  the  sick  must 
be  the  main  reliance  in  serious  illnesses),  the 
correction  of  faults  of  temper  and  disposition, 
the  first  steps  in  learning,  supervision  of  games, 
the  telling  of  stones,  the  first  hint  of  the  mysteries 
of  religion  —  the  range  of  such  requirements  is 
very  great  indeed.  And  since  the  service  re- 
quired is  part  physical,  part  educational,  part 
maternal  and  spiritual,  there  is  no  one  profes- 
sional superior  who  shall  guide  the  practice  of 
the  infant  nurse.  She  is  not,  like  the  nurse  of 
the  sick,  a  physician's  assistant  and  under  the 
immediate  guidance  of  the  family's  medical 
adviser.  She  must  take  her  directions  and  ad- 
vice, first  of  all,  from  the  parents,  if  they  are  at 
hand  to  direct ;  but  also  from  the  physician,  the 
pastor,  if  there  be  a  pastor,  perhaps  the  teacher, 
if  the  family  has  taken  the  teacher  into  such 
close  relations  with  its  inner  life;  and,  most  of 
all,  must  take  counsel  with  herself,  and  draw  on 
the  resources  which  she  has  made  her  own. 

No  good  movement  ever  had  a  beginning.  No 
matter  where  we  may  start  in,  we  find  that  it  is 
already  begun.  I  have  been  unable  as  yet  to  find 
notice  of  any  existing  institution  which  exactly 


176         GOVERNMENT   BY    INFLUENCE 

fills  the  role  which  is  suggested  in  this  paper. 
Yet  the  beginnings  have  undoubtedly  been  made. 
Professor  Charles  R.  Henderson  has  called  my 
attention  to  two  institutions  in  Paris  which  are 
at  least  closely  related  to  such  training  schools 
as  are  here  contemplated.  One  is  the  ficole  des 
Meres,  which  was  founded  by  Mme.  Augusta 
Moll- Weiss  at  Bordeaux  in  1897  and  removed 
to  Paris  in  1904.  This  school  provides  a  section 
for  professors  and  women  of  the  higher  classes; 
a  second  section  for  women  intending  to  enter 
household  service  as  nurses,  cooks,  etc. ;  a  third 
section  for  women  of  the  working  classes ;  and  a 
fourth  section  for  instruction  in  domestic  econ- 
omy and  management  of  the  home.  Its  pur- 
poses are  extremely  varied.  It  is  intended  to 
prepare  young  women  directly  for  duties  as 
heads  of  families,  to  prepare  others  to  become 
teachers  of  domestic  economy,  and  to  give  in- 
struction to  working  women  in  such  economic 
and  ethical  principles  as  may  be  of  importance 
for  them  to  understand,  in  practical  hygiene, 
sanitation,  etc. 

Another  Parisian  institution  is  known  as  the 
Consultations  respecting  Nurslings  (Consulta- 
tions de  Nourrissons) ,  and  is  conducted  by  Pro- 
fessor Budin  of  the  Faculty  of  Medicine  of  the 
University  of  Paris,  in  connection  with  the 
maternity  section  of  a  Paris  hospital.  These 
consultations  are  intended  to  give  to  young 


TRAINING   FOR   MOTHER-WORK       177 

mothers  practical  information  respecting  the 
nourishment  and  care  of  their  infants. 

My  attention  has  also  been  called  to  an  ex- 
tremely interesting  article  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century  for  December,  1906,  by  a  member  of 
the  Women's  Co-operative  Guild,  on  the  "  Ghent 
School  for  Mothers."  This  school,  conducted  by 
Doctor  Miele  in  connection  with  the  Bureau  de 
Bienfaisance,  was  started  about  five  years  ago, 
and  is  evidently  carrying  on  a  work  of  the  greatest 
interest.  The  services  which  it  renders  include 
dispensaries  for  babies,  a  milk  depot,  health 
talks  to  mothers,  a  course  of  training  for  girls, 
and  also  some  theoretical  instruction  in  the  care 
of  infants  and  practice  in  a  number  of  creches. 

In  an  open  letter  relating  to  "  Unskilled 
Mothers,"  Mrs.  Florence  Kelley,  in  the  Cen- 
tury Magazine  for  February,  1907,  tells  of  the 
Association  of  Practical  Housekeeping  Centers, 
which  was  incorporated  in  the  City  of  New  York 
in  February,  1906,  and  does  a  valuable  work  in 
the  homes  of  the  poor  of  Manhattan  and  Brook- 
lyn. Incidentally,  Mrs.  Kelley  tells  in  this  letter 
of  the  instruction  provided  by  the  County  Coun- 
cil of  London  for  school  children  in  cottages 
altogether  similar  to  those  in  which  they  live. 
One  of  the  Mosely  party  of  teachers  who  recently 
visited  the  Bureau  of  Education  has  given  further 
information  with  reference  to  this  cottage  instruc- 
tion. It  is  carried  on  in  the  neighborhood  of  an 

12 


178         GOVERNMENT    BY    INFLUENCE 

elementary  school,  and  gives  to  young  girls  prac- 
tical experience,  under  conditions  much  like 
those  found  in  their  own  homes,  in  the  ordinary 
duties  of  housekeeping. 

The  Englishwoman's  Year  Book  and  Direc- 
tory for  1903,  the  latest  issue  I  have  at  hand,  con- 
tains notices  of  the  Sesame  House  for  Home  Life 
Training  and  for  the  Training  of  Kindergarten 
Mistresses  and  Lady  Nurses,  at  St.  John's 
Wood ;  and  of  the  Norland  Institute  in  London 
and  the  Liverpool  Ladies'  Sanitary  Association, 
at  both  of  which  "ladies  are  trained  as  nurses  for 
children." 

Coming  nearer  home,  we  find  at  the  Babies' 
Hospital  of  the  City  of  New  York  a  training 
school  for  nursery  maids  which  has  been  in 
operation  for  the  past  sixteen  years.  The  recently 
published  report  of  this  hospital,  for  the  year 
ending  September  30,  1906,  contains  interesting 
information  with  reference  to  this  course  of 
training.  At  the  time  of  this  report,  there  were 
27  pupils  in  the  school.  The  course  of  instruc- 
tion and  training  covers  the  subjects  of  infant 
feeding,  bathing,  hygiene  of  skin,  nursery  hy- 
giene, training  of  children  in  proper  bodily  habits, 
miscellaneous  subjects,  nursery  emergencies,  and 
the  rudiments  of  kindergarten  work.  Thirty- 
four  nurses  were  graduated  from  this  school  in 
the  class  of  1906.  The  following  additional  in- 
formation concerning  the  school  is  conveyed  in 


TRAINING    FOR    MOTHER-WORK        179 

a  very  interesting  letter  recently  received  from 
the  secretary  of  the  medical  board  of  the  Babies' 
Hospital,  Doctor  L.  Emmett  Holt: 

The  girls  received  are  from  twenty  to  twenty-five  years 
of  age.  The  course  is  eight  months;  six  in  the  hospital 
and  two  months  in  private  families  on  probation  after 
leaving  the  hospital.  Nurses  receive  $7  a  month  during 
their  training.  There  are  trained  annually  about  thirty- 
five  nurses.  Nurses  receive  after  graduation  $25  a  month 
the  first  year.  After  this  most  of  them  receive  $30.  The 
applications  for  nurses  are  greatly  in  excess  of  the  supply 
and  are  often  as  many  as  one  thousand  in  a  single  year. 

Doctor  Holt  adds  that  nurses  are  trained 
in  a  somewhat  similar  way  at  the  following 
institutions : 

Infants'  Hospital  in  Boston; 

St.  Margaret's  Home,  Albany; 

The  Babies'  Hospital,  Newark,  New  Jersey; 

St.  Christopher's  Hospital,  Brooklyn; 

ThePittsburg  Home  for  Babies, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; 

and  that  there  are  other  similar  schools  in  San 
Francisco  and  Buffalo.  I  have,  however,  no 
further  information  with  reference  to  these  other 
schools. 

The  New  York  Evening  Post  of  December 
26,  1906,  contained  a  notice  of  courses  which  are 
given  by  the  Harlem  Young  Women's  Christian 
Association.  These  courses,  it  seems,  are  in- 
tended for  the  training  of  "kindergarten  nurses." 
To  be  admitted  to  such  courses  the  girls  must 


180         GOVERNMENT    BY   INFLUENCE 

be  more  than  eighteen  years  of  age  and  must 
have  had  a  high  school  education  or  its  equiva- 
lent. A  certificate  is  awarded  at  the  end  of  four 
months  of  satisfactory  study,  but  the  full  course 
is  eight  months  in  length.1 

There  are  doubtless  other  experiments  which 
are  in  the  making  and  have  not  yet  come  to  my 
knowledge.  It  will  be  found,  I  think,  that  the 
ground  is  prepared  for  such  an  undertaking  as 
has  been  outlined  above.  But  what  has  thus  far 
been  done  is  in  the  nature  of  pioneering,  of 
scouting  as  it  were,  and  the  real  systematic  ad- 
vance is  yet  to  be  made.  It  may  well  be  believed 
that  the  time  for  such  definite  advance  is  al- 
ready at  hand. 

Just  what  is  to  be  attempted  and  just  how  it 
is  to  be  accomplished  are  not  altogether  clear. 
But  these  things  seem  clear  at  least,  that  the 
training  to  be  given  should  join  theory  with 
practice,  and  that  the  work  must  be  partly  peda- 
gogical and  partly  parallel  to  that  of  the  ordinary 
nurses'  training  school.  For  the  purposes  of 

1  There  has  come  to  my  notice,  since  the  above  was  written, 
a  most  interesting  volume  of  over  five  hundred  pages,  entitled 
"L'education  domestique  des  jeunes  filles,"  by  Louis  Frank 
(Librairie  Larousse,  Paris,  [1904  ?]).  Chapter  III,  on  "  La  science 
des  meres,"  contains  interesting  information  concerning  schools 
somewhat  similar  in  character  and  aim  to  those  here  proposed. 
The  author  speaks  warmly  of  the  "kitchen  gardens"  devised  in 
this  country  some  twenty-five  or  thirty  years  ago  by  Miss  Emily 
Huntington. 


TRAINING   FOR   MOTHER-WORK        181 

practice,  it  seems  desirable  that  the  student  should 
have  access  to  a  babies'  hospital,  a  foundlings' 
home,  a  day  nursery,  or  some  other  institution 
in  which  there  are  children  to  be  cared  for.  The 
theoretical  instruction  can  probably  best  be 
given  in  connection  with  a  college  or  university. 
The  difficulty  of  working  out  any  standard  course 
of  systematic  training  is  obvious,  yet  is  no  greater 
than  other  difficulties  which  have  been  met  and 
overcome  in  the  course  of  our  educational  devel- 
opment. The  problem  is  accordingly  referred 
to  the  departments  of  education  and  of  hygiene 
of  our  women's  colleges,  and  of  universities  to 
which  women  are  admitted,  in  the  confidence 
that,  like  Sentimental  Tommy,  they  will  "find 

a  w'y" 

I  look  to  see  the  problem  ultimately  solved  by 
such  institutions  as  these,  in  co-operation  with 
hospitals  and  other  institutions  for  the  actual 
care  of  infants,  rather  than  in  institutions  of  the 
latter  class  apart  from  colleges  and  universities; 
for  the  training  which  is  here  proposed  is  edu- 
cational in  its  relationships  and  purposes,  and  is 
intended  to  attract  young  women  whose  pre- 
liminary training  fits  them  at  least  for  admission 
to  the  higher  institutions.  It  may,  indeed,  be 
found  that  the  demands  of  practice  will  so  far 
outweigh  other  considerations  as  to  make  it 
necessary  to  conduct  all  of  the  courses  in  con- 
nection with  the  institutions  where  the  babies 


182         GOVERNMENT    BY   INFLUENCE 

themselves  are  to  be  found,  rather  than  in  the 
class  rooms  of  the  ordinary  college.  None  of  the 
effort  which  may  be  put  forth  by  institutions 
other  than  colleges  and  hospitals  to  this  same 
end  will  be  lost.  The  widest  experimentation 
will  be  needed,  and  the  labor  of  the  pioneer,  in 
this  as  in  other  fields,  will  be  not  only  necessary 
but  also  deeply  interesting. 

If  I  have  said  nothing  as  yet  of  the  training  of 
mothers,  on  whom  the  care  and  culture  of  baby 
children  must  chiefly  rest,  it  is  because  such  train- 
ing is  particularly  difficult  to  compass  by  any 
direct  approach.  However  much  young  women 
may  look  forward,  in  a  wholesome  way,  to  the 
responsibilities  of  motherhood,  I  believe  the  most 
of  them  would  shrink  from  any  course  of  training 
intended  expressly  to  prepare  them  for  those 
responsibilities.  If  such  an  attitude  commonly 
appears,  we  may  declare  it  to  be  unreasonable, 
but  we  must  reckon  with  it  as  a  fact.  It  is,  indeed, 
an  attitude  which  finds  some  justification  in  sim- 
ple human  nature.  It  seems  to  me  very  doubtful 
whether  a  course  in  school  or  college  expressly 
intended  to  fit  young  women  to  be  wise  mothers 
of  little  children  would  have  much  chance  of 
success.  But  I  do  believe  that  a  professional 
course,  intended  to  fit  young  women  for  the 
vocation  of  children's  nurse,  would  have  a  much 
better  chance  of  success.  It  is  reasonable  to  ex- 
pect that  when  such  courses  are  well  started  they 


TRAINING   FOR   MOTHER-WORK        183 

will  be  largely  attended,  and  that  those  who  have 
taken  them  and  received  certificates  or  diplomas 
showing  that  they  have  pursued  them  success- 
fully, will  find  employment  in  abundance  await- 
ing them.  Still  further,  it  is  not  unreasonable  to 
hope  that  when  the  vocation  of  baby  nurse  or 
nursery  matron  or  whatever  it  may  be  called, 
shall  have  become  a  well-established  profession, 
its  influence  will  spread  abroad  in  many  desirable 
ways.  Some  of  these  graduates  will  become 
teachers  of  classes  of  young  mothers  in  college 
settlements  and  Young  Women's  Christian  As- 
sociations. Many  of  them  will  marry  and  will 
carry  their  knowledge  and  skill  into  homes  of 
their  own.  Some  young  women,  already  be- 
trothed, will  take  the  course  of  training  with  no 
other  thought  than  that  of  fitting  themselves  for 
the  homes  that  are  to  be  theirs.  And  it  may  be 
that  the  special  course  will  gradually  lead  the 
way  to  some  more  general  form  of  education  for 
the  life  of  the  home,  which  may  find  its  place  and 
do  its  beneficent  work  in  all  our  schools  and  col- 
leges for  women. 

If  I  have  said  little  in  this  paper  of  the  reli- 
gious side  of  the  training  here  proposed,  it  is  not 
that  I  regard  the  religious  side  as  of  subordinate 
importance.  But  in  these  earliest  years,  it  is 
surely  desirable  that  any  over-emphasis  of  the  re- 
ligious consciousness  should  be  carefully  avoided. 
The  simple  and  sincere  suggestion  of  religious 


184         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

conceptions  which  may  safely  be  attempted 
should  be  joined  with  an  equally  wholesome 
mental  and  physical  life,  and  particularly  a  life 
of  wholesome  companionships,  which  is  the  best 
assurance  of  all  right-mindedness  in  the  later 
years  of  childhood. 


XI 

THE  WORK  OF  WOMEN'S  ORGANIZA- 
TIONS IN  EDUCATION 

Read  cat  the  first  Meeting  of  the  Department  of  National 
Organizations  of  Women  of  the  National  Education 
Association,  at  Cleveland,  Ohio,  July  2,  1908.  Pub- 
lished in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Association  for  the  year 
1908. 


XI 


THE   WORK  OF  WOMEN'S  ORGANIZATIONS 
IN  EDUCATION 

FOR  those  who  wish  to  see  the  National 
Education  Association  represent  our  edu- 
cational interests  in  the  broadest  way,  a 
peculiar  significance  attaches  to  the  launching 
of  this  new  department.  An  educational  work 
of  large  significance  and  varied  character,  already 
in  full  progress,  is  here  brought  into  connection 
with  the  comprehensive  undertakings  of  this  As- 
sociation. While  the  responsibility  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  new  department  is  widely  shared, 
I  should  like  at  this  time  to  recall  in  particular  the 
part  taken  by  Miss  Mary  N.  Abbott,  of  Water- 
town,  Connecticut,  who  shortly  before  her  death 
had  been  laboring  with  great  faith  and  devotion, 
to  bring  about  the  arrangement  which  has  here 
been  consummated.  I  saw  her  but  once,  when 
she  was  devoting  her  best  energies  to  this  under- 
taking, and  I  had  never  known  her  aside  from 
this  enterprise;  but  I  was  much  impressed  with 
the  really  religious  earnestness  which  she  brought 
to  her  task.  That  spirit,  I  am  sure,  is  shared  by 
many  others,  and  it  gives  promise  that  this  depart- 


188         GOVERNMENT    BY    INFLUENCE 

ment  is  to  be  one  of  the  most  useful  branches  of 
our  general  organization. 

In  the  beginnings  of  modern  schooling,  a  great 
deal  depended  upon  the  labors  of  unpaid  or- 
ganizers and  overseers,  mostly  women,  whose 
benevolent  spirit  found  in  the  support  and  im- 
provement of  schools  its  best  way  of  discharging 
the  responsibility  of  the  well-to-do  toward  the 
poor  of  their  neighborhood.  Those  who  have 
read  that  interesting  work,  The  Gurneys  of 
Earlham,  by  Augustus  J.  C.  Hare,  will  recall 
the  conscientious  devotion  to  the  education  of  the 
poor  displayed  by  different  members  of  the  Gur- 
ney  family,  and  particularly  by  its  most  con- 
spicuous member,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Fry.  There 
is  much  of  the  same  sort  to  be  found  in  the  per- 
sonal histories  of  eighteenth-  and  early  nineteenth- 
century  England,  and  the  same  spirit  reappears 
in  the  early  education  societies  of  our  Amer- 
ican cities,  in  New  York,  in  Boston,  and  in 
Philadelphia. 

In  both  England  and  America  the  upgrowth  of 
well-ordered  systems  of  public  education  threw 
endeavors  of  this  kind  into  an  eclipse.  In  place 
of  schools  supported,  with  the  greatest  difficulty, 
by  private  subscription,  there  appeared  schools 
established  by  law  and  maintained  by  taxation. 
Teaching  became  both  a  professional  occupa- 
tion and  a  branch  of  the  civil  service.  The  re- 
sponsibility for  everything  educational,  at  least 


ORGANIZATIONS   IN   EDUCATION       189 

for  everything  in  the  nature  of  public  and  organ- 
ized education,  was  shifted  to  a  body  of  profes- 
sional servants  of  the  commonwealth.  The  edu- 
cational societies  went  out  of  existence,  as  did 
the  American  Anti-slavery  Society  when  the 
thirteenth  amendment  to  our  Constitution  was 
adopted.  The  contributions  and  the  benevolent 
activities  of  those  who  had  carried  the  burden  of 
schools  were  transferred  to  other  charities.  Edu- 
cation had  simply  ceased  to  be  an  eleemosynary 
and  missionary  enterprise,  and  had  become  a  part 
of  the  ordinary  administration  of  state  and  local 
governments. 

Now,  it  is  plain  to  see  that,  while  education 
gained  a  great  deal  more  than  it  lost  by  the 
change,  the  loss  was  real  and  serious.  Fortu- 
nately, the  professional  teachers  who  took  up  the 
educational  burden  were  themselves  human  as 
well  as  professional.  Some  of  the  finest  devotion 
to  the  welfare  of  little  children  and  to  the  wider 
purpose  of  the  public  weal  appears  to-day  in 
their  activities.  It  is  necessary  to  their  best 
service  that  as  they  become  more  professional 
they  should  become  more  than  professional,  and 
many  of  them  have  come  up  unfailingly  to  this 
higher  plane.  But  it  takes  large  natures  to  carry 
out  so  large  a  program,  and  it  is  not  surprising 
that  it  has  been  done  with  varying  degrees  of 
success.  The  best  teachers  of  all  see  most  clearly 
this  need,  that  new  ways  shall  be  found  of  bring- 


190         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

ing  to  the  support  of  the  modern  public  school 
some  of  those  finer  forces  of  our  community  life 
that  once  made  the  school  and  kept  it  alive. 

Matters  which  lie  wholly  in  the  field  of  science 
-  the  method  of  constructing  a  bridge,  of  testing 
our  milk  or  water  supply,  of  combating  an  epi- 
demic, of  determining  a  question  of  legal  right  — 
these  things  are  professional;  and  extra-profes- 
sional interference  in  such  affairs  would  do  more 
harm  than  good.  In  education,  too,  there  is  a 
large  field  of  professional  knowledge,  in  which 
interference  by  the  general  public  or  even  by  a 
board  of  education  representing  the  public,  could 
only  do  more  harm  than  good.  Within  its  limits, 
the  professional  judgment  of  the  trained  and  ex- 
perienced teacher  is  to  be  more  scrupulously 
respected  to-day  than  ever  before.  Not  a  book 
sh'ould  be  placed  in  the  school  library  nor  a  pic- 
ture on  the  schoolroom  wall,  no  society,  no 
matter  how  good  its  object,  should  be  formed 
within  the  school  under  pressure  from  without, 
no  special  method  nor  device  of  teaching  nor  of 
government  should  be  imposed  upon  the  school, 
unless  it  have  the  approval  of  the  teaching  force 
within  the  school. 

It  is  when  we  come  into  the  field  of  morals  that 
every  man  is  responsible  for  a  judgment  of  his 
own,  and  cannot  shift  it  to  the  shoulders  of  an- 
other. And  education  in  one  of  its  main  aspects 
is  essentially  a  question  of  morals.  It  is  a  ques- 


ORGANIZATIONS   IN   EDUCATION       191 

tion  in  which  the  professional  point  of  view  can- 
not pre-empt  the  whole  field,  and  in  which  the 
non-professional  citizen  is  morally  bound  to  have 
opinions  of  his  own.  Every  public  question,  in 
like  manner,  has  a  moral  side.  The  building  of 
bridges,  the  conduct  of  dairies,  the  practice  of  the 
physician  and  the  attorney,  these  are  questions  to 
which  the  common  citizen  cannot  be  indifferent. 

We  have  then  a  large  range  of  activities  in 
which  the  professional  teacher  should  clearly 
have  the  right  of  way,  and  an  equally  clear  out- 
lying territory,  of  great  importance,  in  which  we 
are  dealing,  not  with  professional  responsibility 
but  with  moral  and  community  responsibility. 
And  these  two  are  fringed  in  together  in  an  inter- 
mediate shadow-land  where  some  of  the  most 
vital  questions  of  to-day  are  found. 

This  new  department  deals  with  that  outlying 
field  and  with  that  indeterminate  shadow-land. 
Its  relation  to  the  schools  is  non-professional  and 
moral.  It  is  to  further  a  return  to  the  side  of 
popular  education  of  those  benevolent  and  mis- 
sionary endeavors  which  were  once  the  main 
support  of  popular  education.  But  we  are  to 
remember  that  in  the  intervening  years  the  spirit 
of  the  benevolent  missionary  has  changed.  The 
spirit  which  did  things  for  others  for  their  good 
has  been  transformed  into  the  spirit  which  does 
things  with  others  for  the  common  good.  In  this 
old  spirit,  renewed  and  remade,  it  is  to  be  hoped 


192         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

that  the  department  you  have  inaugurated  may 
become  a  rallying  point  for  those  good  influ- 
ences in  our  communities  which  seek  to  find  ways 
of  working  for  and  with  the  common  schools. 

It  is  right  that  women  should  lead  in  this  cause. 
They  have  shown  capacity  for  such  leadership. 
But  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  men  and  women  alike 
who  desire  that  the  non-professional  responsi- 
bility of  our  communities  for  public  education 
shall  be  adequately  discharged  —  that  all  of  those 
who  have  a  mind  to  make  education  of  more 
worth  in  their  communities  than  it  has  been  at 
the  best  hitherto  —  shall  know  better  what  to  do 
and  shall  do  it  with  better  courage  for  the  en- 
lightenment which  this  department  can  give. 

You  will  not  expect  my  suggestions  to  take  the 
form  of  a  detailed  program  of  topics  for  your  con- 
sideration. Much  of  your  work  has  already  been 
blocked  out  by  the  societies  that  are  here  repre- 
sented. Much  of  it  must  arise  to  meet  the  special 
need  and  occasion.  The  general  platform  on 
which  you  had  met  by  common  agreement  be- 
fore this  department  was  organized,  embodies  a 
number  of  the  most  important  proposals  for  edu- 
cational improvement  on  which  the  friends  of  ed- 
ucation generally  are  agreed.  In  these  matters 
your  work  is  that  of  bringing  into  effective  prom- 
inence a  number  of  improvements  in  which  at 
least  a  passive  unanimity  has  already  been 
secured. 


ORGANIZATIONS   IN   EDUCATION       193 

I  should  like,  however,  to  indicate  a  general 
line  of  advance  in  the  educational  affairs  of  our 
larger  centers  of  population,  a  plan  which  is  ex- 
tremely simple  and  yet  must  be  regarded  for  the 
present  as  somewhat  visionary.  I  should  like 
to  see  all  of  the  teachers  organized  for  the  con- 
sideration, from  time  to  time,  of  definite  proposals 
for  the  improvement  of  the  schools;  and  all  of 
the  parents  of  school  children  organized,  with 
other  interested  citizens,  for  a  similar  purpose. 
Without  hampering  our  educational  authorities 
in  any  of  their  ordinary  work,  and  without  re- 
lieving them  of  their  ultimate  responsibility  for  all 
of  the  work  of  the  schools,  an  informal  and  habit- 
ual referendum  might  well  be  agreed  upon,  under 
which  all  proposals  for  far-reaching  changes  in 
the  plan  of  education  should  be  considered  at 
length  by  these  two  independent  bodies.  All 
manner  of  conference  and  co-operation  between 
the  two  should  take  place,  and  certain  committees 
of  conference  and  certain  other  organizations 
should  include  teachers  and  parents  on  equal 
terms. 

Endless  delays  should,  of  course,  be  avoided; 
but  by  some  such  arrangement  as  this  we  might 
be  reasonably  sure  that  no  sweeping  change 
should  be  made  in  our  systems  of  education  till 
it  should  be  fairly  well  understood  by  those 
who,  next  to  the  pupils  themselves,  are  most 
concerned  with  the  experiment. 

13 


194         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

But  such  an  arrangement  should  not  only  pre- 
vent sudden  and  ill-considered  change.  It  should 
prevent  long-continued  and  equally  ill-considered 
lack  of  change.  We  need  to  keep  the  spirit  of  in- 
vention alive  in  our  school  systems,  for  new  times 
call  for  new  measures.  In  both  of  the  bodies  to 
which  I  have  referred  the  spirit  of  initiative 
should  be  fostered.  In  education  as  in  other  fields 
the  great  majority  of  new  inventions  fail  and 
ought  to  fail.  But  the  hundredth  one  or  the 
thousandth,  that  is  a  thing  of  great  price.  Let 
the  body  of  non-professional  friends  of  educa- 
tion be  one  in  which  a  premium  is  placed  upon 
suggestions  for  improvement  and  reform.  Let 
fair  consideration  be  given  to  suggestions  of  this 
kind.  If  they  are  widely  approved,  let  them  be 
passed  on  to  the  body  of  practical  teachers  for  a 
second  approval,  or  for  modification  or  rejection. 
Or  let  the  procedure  be  turned  about,  as  the  occa- 
sion may  demand.  But  let  us  through  this  means 
have,  from  year  to  year,  proposals  sent  up  to  the 
education  authorities  which  shall  represent  not 
merely  the  half-baked  enthusiasm  of  some  bright 
leader  who  has  won  a  sudden  following,  but  the 
conviction  of  those  who  have  looked  into  the 
matter  with  care  and  conscience,  some  of  them 
from  the  side  of  what  the  community  wants,  and 
some  from  the  side  of  what  the  schools  can  do. 

My  own  suggestion,  as  you  see,  is  none  too 
thoroughly  wrought  out  as  yet,  and  it  has  not  yet 


ORGANIZATIONS   IN   EDUCATION       195 

run  the  gantlet  of  either  a  body  of  teachers  or  a 
body  of  friendly  neighbors  of  the  school.  I  hope 
it  may  have  criticism,  however,  from  both  of 
these  sides.  And  I  venture  to  put  it  forward  here 
as  one  of  the  many  proposals  for  the  good  of  our 
education  which  you  are  to  discuss  to  some  good 
purpose  in  this  first  meeting  of  your  department. 


XII 

THE     DISTINCTIVE     FUNCTIONS     OF 

UNIVERSITY  AND  NORMAL  SCHOOL 

IN  THE  PREPARATION  OF 

TEACHERS 

Read  at  the  Meeting  of  the  National  Council  of  Education 
at  Cleveland,  Ohio,  June  30,  1908.  Published  in  the 
Proceedings  of  the  National  Education  Association  for 
the  year  1908,  and  in  Education  for  September,  1908. 


XII 


THE  DISTINCTIVE  FUNCTIONS  OF  UNIVERSITY 
AND  NORMAL  SCHOOL  IN  THE  PREPARA- 
TION OF  TEACHERS 

WHAT  I  have  to  present  may  be  summed 
up  as  follows:  The  chief  difficulty  of 
adjustment  from  the  side  of  the  nor- 
mal school  arises  from  the  fact  that  the  normal 
school  seems  to  be  out  of  the  main  current  of 
our  scholastic  life,  which  flows  from  the  ele- 
mentary school  through  the  high  school  directly 
into  the  university  or,  the  other  way  round, 
from  the  university  to  the  secondary  and  ele- 
mentary school. 

The  chief  difficulty  of  adjustment  from  the 
side  of  the  university  arises  from  the  fact  that 
it  has  been  found  impossible  as  yet  to  organize 
in  the  university  any  system  of  training  in  the 
actual  practice  of  teaching  that  can  be  com- 
pared in  efficiency  with  that  to  be  found  in  our 
best  normal  schools. 

We  are  now  well  accustomed  to  the  idea  that 
all  grades  of  education  in  this  country  are  to  be 
closely  bound  together,  from  the  lowest  to  the 


200         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

highest.  Our  fidelity  to  the  spirit  of  democracy 
requires  this  of  us,  and  we  are  convinced  that 
it  is  best  in  the  long  run  both  for  science  and  for 
the  national  life.  Continuity  and  coherence  are 
watchwords  of  our  educational  organization. 

But  just  because  the  higher  grades  of  instruc- 
tion are  bound  fast  to  the  lower,  we  see  the  need 
of  especial  care  that  a  steady  progression  shall 
be  maintained  in  both  the  method  and  the  con- 
tent of  our  teaching.  No  grade  of  instruction 
shall  be  allowed  to  lay  a  detaining  hand  of  scho- 
lastic custom  and  inertia  upon  the  grade  above  it. 
At  no  stage  of  our  scholastic  ascent  shall  we 
tarry  for  more  than  two  years  with  instruction 
of  essentially  the  same  type  or  the  same  grade 
of  difficulty. 

Furthermore,  we  cannot  be  content  with  the 
standards  of  the  past.  Not  only  our  own  na- 
tional development,  but,  more  particularly,  our 
closer  touch  with  the  rest  of  the  world,  has  shown 
us  that  our  standards  have  been  pitched  too  low. 
This  is  true  both  on  the  side  of  knowledge  and 
on  the  side  of  skill  in  teaching.  In  our  new 
position  in  the  world  it  is  not  enough  that  we 
win  patronizing  approval  of  our  science  and  of 
our  school  instruction  from  the  older  culture 
nations.  That  new  position  requires  of  us  that 
we  do  our  full  part  in  determining  what  the 
world-standard  shall  be,  both  in  pure  science 
and  in  pedagogic  practice.  This  is  particularly 


UNIVERSITY   AND    NORMAL   SCHOOL     201 

difficult  when  half  our  teaching  force  is  a  rope  of 
sand  and  when  the  profitable  pursuits  of  ap- 
plied science  are  luring  our  scientists  away  from 
their  laboratories.  But  these  unfavorable  cir- 
cumstances cannot  relieve  us  of  our  responsi- 
bility; and  a  consideration  of  the  higher 
attainments  which  the  present  times  demand,  as 
regards  both  knowledge  and  teaching  skill,  has 
an  important  bearing  on  the  distribution  of 
function  between  normal  schools  and  universities. 
We  are  pretty  well  agreed  that  the  knowledge 
of  subject-matter  and  skill  in  presentation  are 
both  requisite  in  all  grades  of  teaching,  and  that, 
broadly  speaking,  the  skill  is  of  greater  relative 
importance  in  the  earlier  grades  and  the  knowl- 
edge in  the  later  years  of  schooling.  A  general 
recognition  of  this  fact  works  automatically  in 
the  distribution  of  teachers,  tending  to  place  the 
graduates  of  colleges  and  universities  in  high 
school  positions  and  the  graduates  of  normal 
schools  in  elementary  grades,  with  a  fair  mingling 
of  the  two  in  the  principal  ships  and  teaching  po- 
sitions of  grammar  schools.  Making  allowance 
for  many  exceptions,  I  think  we  should  be  agreed 
that  the  public  good  is  fairly  well  served  by  such 
a  distribution.  We  must  recognize  the  fact  that 
high  schools,  of  the  type  and  standing  now  ex- 
pected in  our  high  schools,  must  be  mainly 
taught  by  those  who  have  had  collegiate  or  uni- 
versity training.  The  same  should  be  said  of  the 


202         GOVERNMENT    BY    INFLUENCE 

seventh  and  eighth  grades  of  our  grammar 
schools  when  they  are  taught  on  the  department 
plan  or  offer  studies  of  secondary  grade. 

We  need  to  get  special  knowledge  and  special 
skill  into  their  right  relations  to  each  other,  and  a 
third  element  must  be  added,  namely,  special 
inborn  fitness  for  teaching.  The  considerations 
which  we  have  before  us,  then,  range  them- 
selves about  as  follows : 

It  is  of  first  importance  that  we  attract  into  the 
business  of  teaching  and  into  our  training  schools 
for  teachers  those  who  have  the  right  stuff  in 
them,  the  right  kind  of  manhood  and  woman- 
hood, for  such  work. 

It  is  next  in  importance  that  these  persons 
shall  be  well  educated,  as  regards  both  general 
culture  and  special  knowledge  of  some  one  sub- 
ject or  group  of  subjects. 

Close  after  these  requirements  comes  the  re- 
quirement of  technical  training  for  the  processes 
of  teaching. 

President  Alderman  remarked,  in  his  recent 
paper  on  The  Growing  South:  "The  ability  of 
this  generation  to  recognize  education  as  some- 
thing larger  than  mere  learning  or  even  disci- 
pline, to  perceive  it  as  a  great  force  moulding 
national  character,  has  caused  the  enlistment  into 
this  field  of  work  of  young  men  and  young  women 
of  creative  capacity  and  exalted  character,  who, 
under  other  conditions  in  Southern  history, 


UNIVERSITY   AND    NORMAL    SCHOOL    203 

would  have  instinctively  turned  to  political  and 
social  fields  of  distinction  and  service." 

Such  a  condition  is  of  the  utmost  importance 
for  the  teaching  profession  and  for  teachers' 
training  schools  of  every  kind.  It  can  be  brought 
about  only  through  the  concurrence  of  the  whole 
set  of  conditions  surrounding  our  educational 
system.  All  that  can  be  done,  by  co-operative 
action  of  all  persons  concerned,  will  be  needed 
to  turn  toward  education,  in  the  country  at  large, 
those  who  can  best  do  the  work  of  education. 

The  second  requirement,  that  the  teacher  be 
well  educated,  is  emphasized  here  for  two 
reasons:  First,  because  a  teacher  needs  such  a 
grade  of  education  as  will  give  him  an  assured 
place  with  the  best  educated  people  in  his  com- 
munity, and  so  give  to  his  influence  in  the  school 
room  the  added  weight  of  the  respect  of  the  com- 
munity; secondly,  because  the  teacher  needs 
such  a  standing  with  his  pupils  that  his  influence 
upon  them  will  outlive  their  days  of  schooling. 
There  is  a  kind  of  skill  in  teaching,  adequate 
and  successful  according  to  the  standard  of 
immediate  requirements,  sometimes  markedly 
successful,  which  nevertheless  is  without  depth, 
and  so  falls  flat  when  it  comes  to  the  need  of  a 
lasting  influence  in  the  grown-up  lives  of  those 
on  whom  it  has  been  exercised.  It  is  particularly 
unfortunate  when  it  happens,  as  sometimes  it 
does  happen,  that  the  most  distinct  and  conscious 


204          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

moral  impression  is  made  by  a  teacher  whose 
skill  in  teaching  is  not  balanced  by  impressive 
and  substantial  scholastic  attainments,  a  teacher 
who  has  become  a  pathetic  memory  and  noth- 
ing more  when  his  pupils  have  reached  their 
maturity. 

The  third  requirement,  that  the  teacher  shall 
have  mastered  the  art  of  teaching,  is  likewise 
emphasized  here  for  two  reasons:  First,  that 
his  lack  of  skill  may  not  come  between  him  and 
his  pupils,  or  indeed  come  between  his  pupils 
and  their  rightful  education.  The  Apostle  Paul, 
you  remember,  boasted  that  he  did  not  frustrate 
the  grace  of  God.  And  secondly,  that  the  young 
teacher,  particularly,  shall  be  able  to  go  into 
team-work  with  the  rest  of  the  teaching  force. 
There  is  something  pitifully  lonesome  for  him- 
self and  hampering  to  his  fellows  in  the  position 
of  a  highly  educated  teacher  who  has  not  enough 
of  pedagogic  interest  and  teacher-training  to 
enable  him  to  join  hands  with  others  in  making 
the  school  a  school. 

Now  let  us  come  back  to  the  actual  difficulties 
of  present  adjustment.  A  normal-school  presi- 
dent said  to  me  not  long  ago,  "If  you  want  to  do 
anything  for  the  normal  schools,  help  them  to 
get  out  of  the  blind  alley  in  which  they  find 
themselves."  It  was  only  another  way  of  stating 
the  difficulty  which  was  mentioned  at  the  outset 
of  this  paper.  Another,  a  teacher  in  a  normal 


UNIVERSITY   AND    NORMAL    SCHOOL     205 

school,  put  it  in  this  way:  "Personal  relations 
within  the  school  are  good,  but  intellectually  we 
are  starving."  I  am  well  aware  of  another  side 
to  the  case.  Individual  presidents  and  teachers 
of  normal  schools  have  made  their  institutions 
fairly  a-tingle  with  intellectual  and  aesthetic 
interest.  Strong  teachers  continue  to  go  into 
the  normal  schools,  many  of  them  bearing  the 
higher  degrees  of  the  most  advanced  universities. 
But  the  blind-alley  exists,  not  as  a  fault  but  as 
a  situation.  It  appears  in  other  unattached  pro- 
fessional schools,  in  schools  of  medicine,  of  law, 
and  of  theology.  It  may  be  doubted  whether 
an  adequate  remedy  is  to  be  found  in  empower- 
ing normal  schools  to  offer  collegiate  courses  and 
give  collegiate  degrees,  though  that  plan  may  be 
justified  where  a  full  course  of  collegiate  grade 
can  be  provided  without  detriment  to  the  wider 
work  of  the  institution.  The  obvious  remedy 
is  to  bring  the  normal  school  into  more  intimate 
relations  with  the  institutions  in  which  the  high- 
est scientific  work  is  done,  to  give  it  an  appro- 
priate place  in  the  university  system  of  its  state. 
Just  how  this  is  to  be  done  in  any  given  case,  I  am 
not  prepared  to  say.  The  cases  are  extremely 
various.  The  present  disposition  on  the  part 
of  our  universities  to  break  the  undergraduate 
course  in  two  at  the  close  of  the  sophomore  year, 
suggests  that  in  some  instances  the  normal 
schools  might  profitably  offer,  along  with  their 


206         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

other  courses,  the  first  two  years  of  the  college 
course.  One  incidental  adjustment  which  seems 
worthy  of  consideration  is  a  regular  and  syste- 
matic exchange  of  instructors  between  the  normal 
school  and  a  university  or  certain  universities. 
Such  an  exchange,  when  it  settled  into  an  ac- 
cepted routine,  would,  I  believe,  have  advantages 
for  both  of  the  sides  concerned. 

The  second  difficulty  of  which  I  spoke,  that 
on  the  side  of  the  university,  is  the  difficulty  of 
providing  suitable  practice  teaching,  particularly 
in  schools  of  secondary  grade.  This  difficulty 
has  been  partially  met,  in  a  variety  of  ways,  at 
Harvard,  Brown,  Chicago,  and  California  Uni- 
versities, at  Teachers  College,  and  other  institu- 
tions. It  does  not  seem  to  me  that  it  has 
anywhere  been  fully  met.  It  is  comparatively  easy 
to  provide  practice  teaching  of  a  grammar  grade 
or  in  laboratory  courses  in  the  high  school,  but 
for  high  school  class  work  outside  of  the  lab- 
oratory, it  is  more  difficult.  The  normal  schools, 
by  their  successful  organization  of  practice 
teaching  of  an  elementary  grade,  have  set  a 
standard  of  practical  training.  And  strong  city 
superintendents  and  high  school  principals  are 
demanding,  with  good  show  of  reason,  that  they 
shall  not  be  required  to  do  the  breaking-in  of 
high  school  teachers,  when  the  normal  school 
accomplishes  the  breaking-in  of  teachers  for 
elementary  schools. 


UNIVERSITY   AND   NORMAL   SCHOOL    207 

In  the  main  it  seems  to  me  that  university 
authorities  have  not  yet  taken  this  problem  seri- 
ously. Yet  it  is,  I  am  persuaded,  a  problem 
which  will  have  to  be  taken  seriously.  It  is  to 
be  hoped  that  closer  relations  between  normal 
schools  and  universities  may  lead  to  wider  ex- 
perimentation in  this  field.  I  do  not  look  for 
an  altogether  satisfactory  outcome,  however, 
till  the  matter  has  been  taken  in  hand  by  some 
of  our  state  legislatures.  In  a  serious  way,  as 
part  of  the  educational  system  of  the  state,  the 
professional  courses  of  our  universities  must, 
it  would  seem,  be  supplemented  by  regular  pro- 
vision for  special  high  schools  organized  expressly 
as  schools  for  practice  teaching ;  or  by  apprentice 
teaching  in  designated  high  schools,  after  the 
manner  of  the  German  Probe jahr;  or  by  both 
of  these  provisions  with  others  added  thereto. 


XIII 

INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  AS  A 
NATIONAL  INTEREST 

Read  before  the  Department  of  Superintendence  of  the  Na- 
tional Education  Association  at  its  meeting  in  Chicago, 
February  25,  1909.  Published  in  the  Proceedings  of 
the  Department,  1909. 


xm 

INDUSTRIAL   EDUCATION   AS   A   NATIONAL 
INTEREST 

THERE  can  be  no  doubt  that  industrial 
education  is  needed  to  perpetuate  the 
prosperity  of  our  industries.  This  aspect 
of  the  case  has  been  widely  discussed,  and  may 
simply  be  taken  for  granted  here. 

The  point  to  be  chiefly  emphasized  at  the  pres- 
ent time  is  that  the  great,  dominant  need  of  the 
United  States  as  regards  education  is  the  same 
now  that  it  has  always  been.  It  is  the  need  of 
a  body  of  citizens  who  are  free,  through  intelli- 
gence and  self-control.  The  main  business  of 
American  education  for  the  future  as  in  the  past 
is  the  training  of  our  people  to  genuine  freedom. 
And  that  means  a  training  to  intelligent  self- 
direction  in  the  paths  of  righteousness.  We  still 
believe  that  such  training  is  possible,  and  that  it 
is  worthy  of  our  best  endeavors. 

Does  this  imply  that  special  training  for  the 
industries  is  unimportant?  Far  from  it.  New 
wine  may  not  be  put  into  old  bottles,  but  old 
wine  must  often  be  put  into  new  bottles.  The 


212         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

old  spirit  of  our  education  must  pass  over  into 
new  forms  of  education  to  meet  our  present 
needs.  In  dealing  with  this  newer  education, 
we  must  have  due  regard  for  sameness  and  due 
regard  for  difference.  Let  us  speak  of  differ- 
ence first.  There  is  danger  that  our  new,  indus- 
trial education  will  be  made  so  like  the  older 
education  that  its  distinctive  values  will  be  lost. 
If  we  are  not  exceedingly  careful,  that  will  be 
the  result  where  industrial  courses  are  organ- 
ized in  the  old  schools.  We  may  get  simply  the 
old  book-and-laboratory  education  masquerad- 
ing as  industrial  education.  Such  a  fiasco  is  by 
all  means  to  be  avoided,  even  if  we  have  to  make 
new  schools  in  which  the  new  training  may  fully 
establish  its  different  character. 

Let  us  next  take  account  of  unity.  If  we  can 
fully  secure  the  requisite  difference,  there  is  great 
gain  in  having  the  new  courses  organized  in 
close  connection  with  the  old.  We  emphasize 
thereby  the  unity  of  our  people  in  all  of  their 
classes  and  employments.  But  if  the  new  train- 
ing must  to  some  extent  go  into  separate  schools, 
let  us  by  all  means  keep  those  separate  schools 
in  the  closest  spiritual  connection  with  our  gen- 
eral system  of  education.  The  special  schools 
need  such  connection,  and  the  general  system 
needs  it  equally.  A  technical  training  which 
produces  mere  manual  skill  is  not  what  we 
want.  We  want  a  technical  training  that  shall 


INDUSTRIAL   EDUCATION  213 

educate.  If  our  trade  schools  seek  only  to  cul- 
tivate skill,  they  will  not  contribute  to  the  im- 
provement of  our  industries;  they  will  simply 
turn  out  superior  machines  for  a  stationary 
industry.  On  the  other  hand,  if  our  general 
education  does  not  eventuate  in  skill,  it  will 
give  us  a  scholastic  class,  who  can  only  look 
helplessly  on  the  progress  of  an  industrial  life 
in  which  they  have  no  part,  as  Sir  Galahad  in 
the  castle  gazed  upon  the  procession  of  the  Holy 
Grail. 

The  bond  of  unity  between  general  culture 
and  training  for  a  trade  is  the  later  development 
of  our  conception  of  general  culture.  We  are 
familiar  with  that  form  of  culture  which  takes 
one  out  of  the  limitations  of  daily  life  by  means 
of  ideas  and  associations  which  are  remote  from 
daily  life.  This  is  the  liberal  or  classical  culture 
in  its  various  forms.  Such  culture  is  everlast- 
ingly justified;  and  a  training  which  has  no 
power  to  lift  the  learner  out  of  the  pit  of  present 
sense  and  experience  can  be  only  a  truncated 
and  inorganic  fragment  of  an  education.  Where 
vision  fails  the  people  fail.  But  that  higher  cul- 
ture, too,  is  only  a  part,  and  it  may  work  a  pain- 
ful isolation  of  its  possessor.  Now  we  are  finding 
ways  of  seeking  out  the  hidden  fire  —  the  world- 
sentiments  and  world-ideas  —  forever  latent  in 
the  plainest  every-day  life.  When  we  have  gone 
farther  and  have  made  every  common  environ- 


214          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

ment  yield  up  its  inherent  educational  values, 
then  the  connection  between  scholastic  culture 
and  the  trades  will  be  confirmed  and  realized. 

Should  the  state  concern  itself  with  industrial 
education  as  herein  set  forth  ?  I  think  it  will 
be  under  the  necessity  of  so  doing,  in  some  meas- 
ure, both  for  the  sake  of  its  industries  and,  still 
more,  for  the  sake  of  its  citizenship. 

Should  the  national  government  have  a  part 
in  the  undertaking?  That  is  a  more  difficult 
question,  but  the  answer  may  still,  I  think,  be 
in  the  affirmative.  The  nation  cannot  be  indif- 
ferent, it  cannot  but  have  the  liveliest  interest, 
where  both  its  industries  and  its  citizenship  are 
concerned.  From  the  beginning  it  has  con- 
tributed to  the  furtherance  of  education  in  the 
states,  largely  by  grants  of  lands,  but  in  the 
case  of  the  agricultural  and  mechanical  col- 
leges by  annual  grants  in  money.  This  policy 
has  been  abundantly  justified  in  its  results.  Its 
extension  to  schools  of  a  somewhat  different 
grade  or  character  would  be  so  slight  a  change 
that  it  could  not  be  called  a  departure  from  our 
governmental  traditions. 

But  any  far-reaching  measure  in  this  direc- 
tion should  be  taken  with  due  care  and  foresight. 
It  should  not  be  taken  at  all  if  the  matter  can  be 
adequately  cared  for  by  the  several  states.  In 
any  case  it  should  not  be  taken  in  such  a  way  as 
greatly  to  disturb  the  various  state  systems  of 


INDUSTRIAL   EDUCATION  215 

educational  administration.  A  careful  exami- 
nation of  those  systems,  as  related  to  the  pro- 
posed plan  for  national  subventions,  should  be 
undertaken,  and  the  federal  government  should 
proceed  in  the  matter  only  in  such  way  or  in 
such  ways  as  will  strengthen  the  hands  of  the 
state  educational  authorities. 

Many  interests,  other  than  governmental,  are 
profoundly  involved  in  the  industrial  education 
movement.  They  must  be  considered  in  all 
fairness,  but  from  the  public  and  national  rather 
than  any  private  point  of  view.  We  cannot 
direct  the  industrial  education  in  rural  schools 
simply  to  the  end  of  keeping  young  people  on 
the  farm.  Young  people  in  the  country  should 
have  their  fair  chance  for  any  honorable  career, 
in  city  or  country.  But  country  life,  too,  should 
have  its  fair  chance  to  make  its  legitimate  appeal 
to  these  young  people  as  well  as  the  life  of  the 
city. 

The  point  of  view  of  the  employers  of  labor 
must  be  carefully  considered,  for  the  wisdom 
which  the  direction  of  great  industrial  concerns 
may  have  taught.  But  we  must  not  permit  in- 
dustrial education  to  be  directed  solely  to  the 
increase  of  production.  That  would  be  to  sub- 
ordinate citizens  to  industries.  Broad-minded 
employers  are  among  the  strongest  opponents  of 
so  short-sighted  a  policy. 

The  point  of  view  of  organized  labor  must  be 


216          GOVERNMENT  BY  INFLUENCE 

carefully  considered.  However  much  objection 
there  may  be  to  the  methods  of  any  particular 
labor  organizations,  it  is  plain  to  see  that  organi- 
zation is  better  than  disorganization  on  both 
sides  of  the  industrial  world.  Here,  again,  the 
public  good  is  the  supreme  consideration.  We 
cannot  willingly  permit  the  policy  of  trade- 
unions  to  keep  any  number  of  our  young  citizens 
permanently  barred  from  preparation  for  some 
honorable  manual  occupation.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  cannot  willingly  permit  industrial 
schools  to  be  directed  to  the  disorganization  of 
labor.  The  relation  of  school  training  to  ap- 
prenticeship in  industrial  education  calls  most 
urgently  for  fair  and  thorough  investigation  and 
for  many  and  varied  adjustments. 

And  now,  just  here,  we  come  to  the  main  pur- 
pose of  this  paper.  The  national  problem  of 
industrial  education  must  be  solved  by  a  co- 
operation of  industrialists,  politicians,  and  edu- 
cators. But  the  chief  burden  of  the  solution 
will  be  carried  by  one  or  another  of  these  three 
classes.  The  men  of  business  and  the  men  of 
politics  wield  tremendous  forces  and  bear  tre- 
mendous responsibilities.  They  are  entitled  to 
the  respect  which  these  circumstances  com- 
mand. But  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to 
our  national  life  that  our  educational  profession 
shall  be  found  worthy  to  take  the  lead  in  de- 
termining the  course  of  our  industrial  education. 


INDUSTRIAL   EDUCATION  217 

The  public  will  be  guided  by  our  best  judg- 
ment in  this  matter,  if  it  shall  appear  that  the 
school  men  and  women  are  they  who  take  the 
broadest,  fairest,  most  genuinely  progressive 
view  of  our  position  and  our  needs ;  if  they  make 
some  approach  to  unanimity  in  their  attitude 
toward  the  newer  proposals,  which  shall  not  be 
simply  an  immovable  and  unintelligent  conser- 
vatism nor  an  equally  ill-considered  stampede  in 
the  new  direction ;  if  they  devise  wise  and  prac- 
ticable plans  for  new  undertakings,  not  asking 
large  outlay  for  hasty  ventures,  but  standing 
vigorously  for  well-thought-out  plans  of  improve- 
ment. If  these  characteristics  shall  be  manifest 
in  the  teaching  profession  of  this  country  in  the 
face  of  the  present  situation,  the  solution  of  the 
problem  of  industrial  schools  will  be  an  educa- 
tional solution.  And  that,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  national  interests,  is  devoutly  to  be 
desired. 


XIV 
THE  ART  OF  THE   TEACHER 

An  Address  delivered  at  the  Graduation  Exercises  of  the 
Winthrop  Normal  and  Industrial  College,  at  Rock 
Hill,  South  Carolina,  June  %,  1908,  and  before  the 
Department  of  Pedagogy  of  Wellesley  College,  October 
17,  1908.  An  earlier  draft  of  this  Address  appeared 
under  the  title,  The  Fine  Art  of  Teaching,  in  The  Edu- 
cational Review  for  November,  1898. 


XIV 

THE  ART  OF  THE  TEACHER 

IT  is  a  very  simple  message  that  I  have  to 
bring  you  to-day.  I  wish  to  talk  with  you 
about  the  ordinary  work  of  teaching  school. 
We  are  spending  a  great  deal  of  time  and  thought 
and  money  in  this  country  in  carrying  out  a 
large  educational  policy.  But  that  large  policy 
and  those  large  expenditures  all  come  back  to 
this,  that  we  are  trying  to  put  good  teachers  into 
the  schools  and  get  the  pupils  there  for  them  to 
teach,  and  then  to  make  sure  that  their  teaching 
shall  be  done  under  such  conditions  as  shall 
give  them  the  fairest  possible  chance.  What  a 
few  of  us  may  do  as  regards  general  policies  is 
a  necessary  circumstance.  What  the  teachers 
and  their  pupils  shall  do  in  the  schools  is  the 
main  thing  and  the  real  thing.  As  soon  as  you 
begin  your  chosen  work  of  teaching,  you  will  be 
in  the  very  thick  of  the  conflict  between  light 
and  darkness,  between  Ormazd  and  Ahriman; 
and  some  of  us,  in  supervisory  offices  and  bureaus, 
must  look  on  from  a  distance,  with  now  and  then 
a  pang  of  regret  that  we  cannot  share,  at  first 
hand,  in  your  toils  and  triumphs.  For  my  own 


222         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

part,  I  am  sure  that  some  of  my  most  cherished 
recollections  are  those  of  the  school  room  in 
which  I  had  the  daily  teaching  of  every-day 
boys  and  girls. 

There  are  many  sides  of  teaching  that  we 
might  talk  about,  but  I  shall  speak  of  only  one. 
For  my  text  I  am  indebted  to  a  great  Carolinian 
and  Georgian  whom  I  knew  as  a  great  Cali- 
fornian,  that  venerated  teacher,  Joseph  LeConte. 
In  one  of  his  discussions  of  education  as  a  sci- 
ence, Joseph  LeConte  gave  a  clew  to  the  un- 
derstanding of  education  as  an  art.  It  is  this 
education-art  that  we  are  to  consider  to-day.  I 
mean  education  as  one  of  the  fine  arts,  having 
much  in  common  with  others  of  the  fine  arts. 

Professor  LeConte,  in  the  paper  I  have  men- 
tioned, used  these  words  with  reference  to  the 
methods  of  education:  "Artificial  they  must 
ever  be ;  for  education  is  art,  and  art  must  ideal- 
ize, not  merely  copy  nature.  But,  like  all  art,  it 
must  be  strictly  based  on  nature.  It  must  adopt 
the  methods  of  nature  and  improve  them." 

The  first  thing,  then,  that  we  are  to  note  at 
this  time  is  that  the  fine  art  of  the  teacher  deals 
with  real  things  on  their  ideal  side.  Natural 
science  insists  that  we  shall  see  truly,  that  we 
shall  see  things  as  they  are.  But  art  goes  further 
and  tells  us  that  we  shall  see  most  truly  when  we 
see  things  at  their  best.  Mr.  Barrie  has  put  it  in 
one  of  his  stories,  "To  see  the  best  is  to  see 


THE   ART  OF  THE   TEACHER  223 

most  clearly  " ;  and  then  he  adds,  "it  is  the  lover's 
privilege."  But  the  true  teacher  is  a  lover  of 
children,  and  it  is  his  privilege  to  see  the  best  in 
them,  even  the  best  that  is  not  yet,  but  may  be 
brought  into  being.  So  a  clear-eyed  teacher 
knows  how  faulty  at  their  worst  his  children  are, 
how  dirty  they  are  and  silly,  how  unpleasant  in 
habits  and  dispositions.  But  he  knows  it  without 
knowing  it. 

"Be  to  their  faults  a  little  blind, 
Be  to  their  virtues  very  kind." 

That  is  his  wisdom  for  every  day.  He  does  not 
complain  much  of  the  naughtiness  of  his  pupils. 
But  he  has  a  genuine  glow  of  appreciation  for 
their  better  qualities  and  for  their  promise  of 
future  attainments. 

"Come  and  let  us  live  with  our  children,"  is 
the  version  often  given  to  the  familiar  saying  of 
Froebel.  But  one  who  exercises  the  lover's 
privilege  of  seeing  the  best  will  be  discriminat- 
ing in  this  regard.  He  will  draw  near  to  his 
pupils,  but  on  the  higher  rather  than  the  lower 
planes  of  their  being.  This  is  what  Froebel 
himself  did  and  what  many  another  teacher  has 
done.  They  drew  near  to  their  pupils,  not  by 
frivolous  condescension  to  any  mere  childish- 
ness, but  rather  by  leading  those  children  into  the 
uplands  where  they  were  themselves  at  home. 

Have  you  never  seen  a  teacher  talking  easily 
and  naturally  with  his  pupils  on  higher  themes 


224          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

than  those  with  which  they  had  been  familiar  - 
choosing  his  tune,  when  their  disposition  was 
prepared  for  such  approach,  and  choosing  his 
words,  that  the  things  spoken  might  not  be  too 
easy  nor  yet  too  hard  ?  And  have  you  not  seen 
those  pupils  strive  and  strain  to  reach  that  higher 
ground,  unwilling  to  disappoint  the  teacher's 
confidence  or  lose  the  new  sense  of  higher  powers 
which  he  has  awakened  within  them  ?  It  is  a 
rare  sight;  but  it  may  be  met  with  if  you  look 
for  it,  in  crowded  primary  schools  of  our  great 
cities  and  in  out-of-the-way  country  districts  all 
over  the  land.  There  is  real  education  in  look- 
ing up  and  in  reaching  after  something  a  little 
beyond  our  reach.  We  know  it  very  well  from 
our  own  experience.  You  cannot  guide  your 
pupils,  to  be  sure,  in  regions  where  you  are 
yourself  a  stranger.  But  a  teacher  who  is  press- 
ing forward  to  things  barely  apprehended  as  yet 
and  not  yet  attained,  may  be  the  most  helpful 
teacher  of  all,  through  a  kind  of  comradeship 
of  hope  and  aspiration. 

Even  in  the  more  external  matters  of  good 
breeding,  it  is  well  for  children  to  make  a  try  at 
manners  a  little  above  their  own.  And  we  all 
know  how  good  and  necessary  it  is  to  keep  try- 
ing at  morals  a  little  above  our  own.  There  is  an 
illustration  of  such  teaching  as  this,  drawn  from 
an  old-time  school  in  the  South,  which  will  carry 
my  meaning  more  clearly  than  any  general  re- 


THE   ART   OF  THE   TEACHER  225 

mark  that  I  can  make.  I  refer  to  a  letter  of 
Alexander  H.  Stephens  to  Richard  Malcolm 
Johnston,  in  which  Mr.  Stephens  gave  an  ac- 
count of  a  country  school  teacher  whose  pupil  he 
had  been,  that  teacher  being  Mr.  Stephens'  own 
father:  "He  took  great  pleasure  in  the  act  of 
teaching"  -I  quote  here  from  the  letter: 

His  scholars  generally  were  much  attached  to  him.  He 
was  on  easy  and  familiar  terms  with  them  without  losing 
their  respect;  and  the  smallest  boys  would  approach  him 
with  confidence,  but  never  with  familiarity.  He  had  one 
custom  I  never  saw  or  heard  of  in  any  other  school.  About 
once  a  month  on  a  Friday  evening,  after  the  spelling  classes 
had  got  through  their  tasks,  he  had  an  exercise  on  cere- 
mony, which  the  scholars  called  " learning  manners," 
though  what  he  called  it  —  if  I  ever  heard  him  call  it 
anything  —  I  cannot  remember.  The  exercise  consisted 
in  going  through  the  usual  form  of  salutation  on  meeting 
an  acquaintance,  and  introducing  persons  to  each  other, 
with  other  variations  occasionally  introduced.  .  .  .  These 
exercises,  trivial  as  the  description  may  seem,  were  of 
great  use  to  raw  country  boys  and  girls.  .  .  .  Cheating, 
lying,  and  everything  mean  and  dishonest  he  held  up  to 
scorn  and  abhorrence.  He  was,  so  far  as  I  know,  the  only 
old-field  teacher  of  those  days  on  whom  the  boys  never 
played  the  prank  of  "  turning  out." 

The  old-field  teacher,  I  suppose,  is  now  ex- 
tinct. His  work,  and  a  great  deal  more,  has 
fallen  to  the  young  women  who  graduate  from 
our  normal  schools  and  colleges  and  go  out  to 
teach  in  a  regular  system  of  schools.  Many  of 

15 


226         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

them  will  marry  after  a  time  —  and  the  more  the 
better,  if  their  hearts  go  with  their  hands.  But 
so  long  as  they  are  in  the  schools,  they  are  called 
on  to  practise  as  fine  an  art  as  was  exercised 
by  the  best  of  their  predecessors  in  any  age; 
and  that  art  will  not  be  lost  to  the  world 
if  it  be  carried  over  into  the  narrower  and 
deeper  education  of  the  home.  President  Sharp- 
less  some  years  ago  congratulated  himself  "that 
whether  our  poor  children  were  learning  their 
lessons  or  not,  it  was  a  good  thing  for  them  to 
come  into  intimate  relations  for  several  hours 
daily  with  such  lady-like  teachers  as  one  often 


sees." 


There  is  one  way  of  reaching  up  into  a  larger  life 
that  is  not  always  easy  for  our  lady-like  teachers 
themselves  to  learn,  but  wThich  they  must  needs 
learn  in  order  that  they  may  teach  it  well  in  their 
schools.  I  refer  to  the  lesson  of  civic  life,  the 
lesson  of  duty  to  the  community  and  to  the 
commonwealth . 

The  wise  woman  from  whom  I  learn  much 
every  day  has  been  troubled  to  see  children 
scattering  papers  and  disfiguring  trees  and  side- 
walks on  their  way  from  school.  And  it  has  been 
her  dream  that  some  day  in  our  schools  they  will 
really  come  to  an  understanding  of  their  part  in 
the  general  responsibility  for  our  community 
life.  It  is  easy  to  tell  them  not  to  do  this  or  that. 
May  they  not  come  to  have  things  to  do,  as  well 


THE  ART   OF  THE   TEACHER  227 

as  things  to  leave  undone?  If  some  little  part 
might  be  given  to  them  in  making  their  city  or 
town  or  district  a  better  place  to  live,  they  would 
be  started  on  one  of  the  largest  lessons  that  our 
whole  people  has  to  learn.  I  recall  with  peculiar 
pleasure  the  flowers  planted  about  the  public 
square  in  Scranton,  Pennsylvania,  by  the  school 
children  of  that  city,  and  other  striking  exam- 
ples might  be  mentioned. 

The  life  of  our  neighborhood,  of  our  state  and 
nation  —  it  is  a  thing  for  which  every  citizen,  in 
his  measure,  is  responsible:  great  citizens,  and 
little  citizens,  too.  It  is  one  of  the  things  that 
take  us  out  of  our  selfish  selves,  and  make  us 
reach  up  to  the  destined  stature  of  our  lives.  It 
is  one  of  the  ideas  that  should  be  at  work  in  our 
schools  everywhere.  Here  the  art  of  the  teacher 
comes  to  one  of  its  finest  and  severest  tests :  To 
hitch  the  wagon  of  his  little  school  to  this  star  of 
our  national  life,  and  cause  the  little  children  of 
our  land  to  begin  to  live  for  the  common  good. 

But  now  this  look  at  some  large  ideals  of  the 
teacher's  art  leads  us  to  another  characteristic  of 
all  fine  art,  and  that  is  its  care  for  proportion,  its 
nice  discrimination  between  things  large  and 
small.  The  sense  for  proportion  is  as  indispen- 
sable in  the  school  room  as  in  the  studio,  for  too 
often  we  waste  our  time  on  trifles.  "Good  taste 
rejects  excessive  nicety,"  as  Fenelon  said;  "it 
treats  little  things  as  little  things."  And  good 


228         GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

taste  will  save  a  teacher  from  some  of  the  com- 
monest sins  of  the  teaching  craft. 

A  teacher  cannot  afford  to  attain  perfection  in 
any  part  of  his  work,  at  the  sacrifice  of  that  which 
is  better  than  perfection.  The  perfection  which 
is  attainable  is  too  small  a  result  for  all  our  labor. 
It  is  not  that  which  is  carved  to  a  finish  which  will 
satisfy  us.  We  want  for  ourselves  and  for  our 
children  some  vision  of  majestic,  dim,  unsculp- 
tured  things.  We  want  to  find  our  studies 
opening  up  here  and  there  a  vista  into  some 
unknown  country  and  tempting  us  to  new  ad- 
venture. The  finished  arch  is  good;  but  we 
would  see  through  it 

"That  untravell'd  world,  whose  margin  fades 
Forever  and  forever." 

There  are  those  who  would  say  that  education, 
like  literature,  has  had  its  "age  of  the  carved 
cherry-stones,"  and  that  our  primary  schools  have 
not*  yet  advanced  beyond  that  age.  And  some 
would  charge  this  over-emphasis  on  little  things 
to  the  influence  of  women  in  the  schools.  But 
women  have  no  monopoly  of  such  influence.  A 
petty  man  can  nowhere  be  more  petty  than  in  a 
school.  Matthew  Arnold  tried  to  get  some  big- 
ness into  the  prevalent  conception  of  God.  We 
need,  all  of  us,  to  get  more  bigness  into  our  con- 
ception of  education,  which  is  surely  one  of  the 
works  of  God. 

Yet  perfection  in  the  smaller  things  has  a  part 


THE   ART   OF  THE   TEACHER  229 

and  place  of  its  own.  I  think  we  may  fairly  say 
that  all  of  our  instruction  has,  of  right,  these  two 
aspects  of  method  running  through  it.  Here  we 
must  have  our  work  finished  with  exactness  and 
nicety ;  there  it  must  be  sketched  in  alluring  out- 
lines. Both  modes  of  treatment  are  needed,  but 
they  are  differently  proportioned  and  combined 
in  different  disciplines. 

Our  teachers  require,  in  fact,  that  same  mixing 
of  the  elements  in  themselves  that  is  called  for  in 
their  instruction.  We  can  be  patient  with  the 
grand  vagueness  of  a  young  teacher,  full  of  crude 
and  glowing  immensities,  provided  he  show 
himself  able  to  condense  some  of  his  fire-mist 
into  a  definite  and  ordered  system.  And  we  can 
be  patient  with  an  old-time  schoolmaster's  fond- 
ness for  system,  if  his  system  have  not  absorbed 
and  cooled  and  hardened  for  him  all  of  that 
primal  nebula  with  which  we  may  suppose  him 
to  have  been  once  endowed.  Our  teacher  shall 
have  system  and  fire-mist,  both  at  once.  Let 
him  show  us  a  true  cosmos,  but  if  he  have  a 
little,  wholesome,  unperverted  chaos  left  in  him, 
we  shall  like  him  all  the  better  for  that. 

You  will  doubtless  recall  this  fine  combination 
of  perfectness  in  little  things  with  large  sugges- 
tion of  the  outlying,  cosmic  things,  as  you  have 
seen  it  in  some  of  those  by  whom  you  have  been 
taught.  The  artist  makes  the  large  things  and 
the  little  things  go  together,  as  they  belong  to- 


230          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

gether,  but  each  in  its  own  degree  and  place.  At 
one  time  it  is  a  matter  of  supreme  importance  that 
c-a-t  spells  cat,  that  two  and  two  make  four.  At 
another  time  words  and  facts,  grammar  and  his- 
tory, all  are  subordinate  things,  mere  helps  or 
hindrances,  while  the  thing  of  import  is  that  a 
group  of  young  people  shall  become  aware  of 
some  great  tidal  sweep  and  uplift,  as  in  the  Ode 
on  the  Intimations  of  Immortality. 

A  class  may  work  long,  weary  hours  for  the 
mastery  of  a  lesson.  Then  at  the  end  of  the 
task  the  best  thing,  not  infrequently,  is  reached 
in  some  hint  from  the  teacher  of  the  boundless 
range  of  thought  upon  which  that  little  mastered 
lesson  opens  out.  Yet  that  suggestion,  too, 
would  not  have  been  possible,  if  the  class  had  not 
first  learned  their  plain  and  definite  lesson  and 
learned  it  well.  So  the  great  and  the  small,  the 
definite  and  the  vague,  are  intermixed,  the  one 
supporting  and  seconding  the  other,  and  neither 
the  one  nor  the  other  is  overdone ;  and  there  we 
have  in  the  finished  work  a  well-ordered  temper- 
ateness,  with  all  the  saving  grace  of  wide  variety. 
Such  a  work  is  a  work  of  art,  of  one  of  the  finest 
of  all  the  arts,  and  such  a  work,  I  doubt  not,  some 
of  you  will  achieve. 

There  is  nothing  more  useful  to  the  maintain- 
ing of  just  proportions  in  this  life  than  a  genial 
sense  of  humor.  A  laugh  is  a  dangerous  thing  in 
its  way.  It  must  needs  be  handled  with  judg- 


THE   ART  OF  THE  TEACHER  231 

ment.  But  if  it  carry  no  sting  and  have  some 
genuine  refinement  back  of  it,  it  can  do  a  world 
of  good.  And  its  chief  value  is  that  it  can  save  us 
from  exaggeration.  The  old  builders  put  gar- 
goyles on  their  cathedrals  and  we  put  cartoons 
into  our  newspapers.  Once  let  our  young  teacher 
get  so  absorbed  with  his  art  that  it  runs  away  with 
his  common  sense,  and  the  comic  valentine,  the 
ever-ready  parody,  or  the  surreptitious  drawing 
of  the  school  cartoonist,  is  likely  enough  to  call 
him  to  himself.  If  he  will  not  abuse  it,  the 
teacher,  too,  may  wisely  sprinkle  a  little  salt  of 
comedy  upon  the  flat  seriousness  of  his  school. 
Even  the  forced  buffoonery  of  the  Hoosier 
Schoolmaster  helped  him  over  a  hard  passage  in 
his  hard  experience.  I  suppose  the  tale  has  been 
forgotten  in  this  present  generation,  and  it  is  not 
good  enough  to  repeat.  But  I  may  repeat  a  bit  of 
college  tradition,  well  known  in  some  circles,  but 
worth  the  telling  even  if  it  has  been  heard  before. 
I  fear  it  calls  for  scriptural  knowledge  which  the 
present  generation  is  none  too  sure  of  acquiring. 
The  story  as  I  have  heard  it  is  told  of  Professor 
Moses  Coit  Tyler,  and  belongs  to  his  days  in  the 
University  of  Michigan.  He  was  not  always 
prompt  to  close  his  lecture  with  the  end  of  the 
hour,  and  the  boys  of  his  class  made  known  their 
disapproval  by  vigorous  scuffing  with  their  feet. 
One  day  the  lecture  was  unusually  prolonged  and 
the  noise  of  the  students  was  unusuallv  insistent. 


232          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

Taking  notice  at  last,  the  professor  raised  his 
hand  in  deprecation.  "One  moment,  gentle- 
men," he  said,  "one  moment";  and  then  he 
added,  thoughtfully,  "a  few  more  pearls,  a  few 
more  pearls! " 

After  I  have  tried  my  best  to  characterize  that 
paragon,  an  artist-teacher,  and  find  how  near,  at 
best,  my  description  comes  to  a  catalogue  of 
"moral  virtues  and  their  contrary  vices,"  I  am 
disposed  to  poke  a  bit  of  fun  even  at  this  frail 
paper  of  my  own.  A  genuine  human  being,  though 
with  many  imperfections,  is  so  much  better  than 
any  paragon !  Better,  even  in  that  center  of  all 
things  good  and  correct  which  is  known  as  a 
model  school.  Any  one  who  has  ever  loved  a 
living  girl  knows  that  half  of  her  charm  lies  in 
the  fact  that  he  could  never  by  any  possibility 
have  invented  her  himself.  And  no  synthesis  of 
enumerated  elements  can  ever  construct  for  us  a 
live  and  quickening  teacher. 

But  I  shall  have  to  answer  my  own  gibe,  and 
protest  that  this  is  not  a  paragon  at  all  that  I 
am  setting  forth  and  not  at  all  a  creature  of  my 
invention.  It  is  because  I  have  seen  some  gen- 
uine artists  and  found  them  teaching  in  real 
schools,  that  I  am  moved  to  tell  what  manner  of 
work  they  were  doing.  They  were  artists  in- 
deed, and  for  that  reason  my  account  of  their 
performance  must  fall  far  short  of  its  vivid 
reality.  The  human  quality  of  the  work,  after 


THE   ART  OF  THE  TEACHER  233 

all,  is  what  I  am  seeking  to  bring  before  you, 
and  it  is  a  human  impulse,  I  am  sure,  that 
prompts  one  to  make  such  an  attempt.  The 
hope,  moreover,  that  the  account  will  call  up  in 
your  thought  the  image  of  a  human  teacher, 
depends  upon  the  hours  that  you  yourselves 
have  passed  in  the  presence  of  living  teachers 
who  taught  with  creative  power. 

Now,  if  a  sense  for  proportion,  as  has  been 
said,  is  of  the  essence  of  an  artist's  work,  a  matter 
of  equal  importance  and  still  harder  to  attain  is 
the  genuine  artist's  sense  for  time.  If  the  artist 
is  genuine,  he  is  willing  to  take  time  in  order  that 
he  may  get  the  better  of  time,  for  he  is  endeavor- 
ing to  do  a  work  that  shall  last,  in  spite  of  all  that 
time  may  do. 

A  spirit  which  is  not  the  artist  spirit  is  always 
seeking  after  the  newest  things  because  they  are 
new.  Maarten  Maartens  makes  one  of  his 
characters  say,  "Your  taste  is  entirely  viti- 
ated, my  dear,  because  you  have  no  compre- 
hension of  the  beautiful  out-of-date."  In  the 
same  spirit  Professor  Jackman  used  to  speak, 
with  mild  satire,  to  his  class  in  a  summer 
school.  "You  have  come  here,"  he  would  say, 
"to  learn  the  latest  fashions  in  the  teaching  of 
long  division." 

Be  sure  of  this,  that  what  is  now  the  mode  and 
only  the  mode  will  after  a  while  be  out-of-date. 
Whatever  is  new,  it  shall  grow  old.  The  only 


234          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

things  that  do  not  grow  old  are  the  things  that 
never  were  altogether  new.  Whoever  has  the 
spirit  of  a  true  artist  seeks  to  do  a  work  that  shall 
abide.  Accordingly,  as  regards  means  and  meth- 
ods, he  cares  more  that  they  shall  be  true  and  good 
than  that  they  shall  be  the  newest  of  the  new. 
You  remember  the  lines, 

"He  knew  to  bide  his  time, 
And  can  his  fame  abide." 

And  Lincoln,  of  whom  it  was  said,  was  one  of  the 
great  teachers  of  the  American  people.  Other 
teachers  may  well  learn  that  lesson  of  his  large 
and  liberal  patience. 

It  is  difficult  to  put  this  matter  just  right,  for 
there  is  a  patience  that  is  weakness  and  there  is  a 
haste  that  is  timely  and  necessary.  Dawdling  and 
loitering  never  were  artistic  processes.  In  fact, 
true  art  is  scrupulous  as  regards  waste.  It  exer- 
cises the  finest  economy.  But  it  knows,  too,  how 
to  spend  without  stint,  how  to  labor  on,  quietly 
and  unhurriedly,  as  nature  brings  the  blossom  to 
its  fruit.  Even  the  born  artist  must  learn  that 
perfect  way,  narrower  than  the  scimitar's  edge, 
between  the  imperfection  of  haste  and  the  imper- 
fection of  waste. 

Studies  differ  in  this  regard.  Some  can  best  be 
learned  under  pressure,  with  keen  questioning 
that  calls  for  quick  and  definite  answer.  In  some 
parts  of  arithmetic  this  is  true,  and  in  the  more 


THE   ART   OF  THE   TEACHER  235 

mechanical  parts  of  grammar  and  of  history.  But 
history  in  its  finer  and  deeper  things,  literature, 
and  the  larger  study  of  nature  —  these  must  be 
lived  with,  till  they  warm  the  soul  and  tinge  the 
thought  and  take  up  their  abode  in  the  inner  life. 
Facts  are  to  be  learned,  sharply  and  decisively, 
without  temporizing  or  dilly-dallying.  But  points 
of  view,  appreciations,  attitudes  of  mind,  these 
are  gained  slowly,  and  for  these  we  must  learn  to 
wait.  You  may  wait,  without  urging  the  learner 
at  all,  for  a  week,  a  month,  a  year,  and  it  may  be 
for  many  years.  One  day  you  shall  see  a  new  in- 
telligence flash  into  the  eyes,  the  morning  of  a  new 
life  has  dawned,  and  the  teacher  has  received  his 
great  reward. 

Not  only  do  studies  differ  in  this  regard:  in 
almost  any  piece  of  teaching  there  is  a  time  to 
push  forward  and  a  time  to  wait.  From  experi- 
ence in  the  class  room,  I  am  inclined  to  accept  the 
view  of  those  psychologists  who  say  that  there  are 
plateaus  in  the  process  of  learning  any  new  thing. 
That  is,  there  are  times  when  continued  effort 
fails  to  bring  continued  improvement,  but  when, 
if  practice  be  carried  steadily  forward,  the  upward 
movement  after  a  little  begins  again.  The  time 
of  arrest  is  found  to  be  a  preparation  for  further 
gains.  It  requires  fine  insight  and  not  a  little  ex- 
perience to  put  these  plateau  periods  to  their 
largest  use.  It  may  be  best  to  turn  aside  to  other 
things,  to  let  that  part  of  the  subject  lie  fallow  for 


236          GOVERNMENT   BY   INFLUENCE 

a  while.  It  may  be  best  to  go  forward,  and  let  the 
upward  trend  of  improvement  set  in  again  when 
it  will.  When  the  children  of  Israel  came  to  the 
Red  Sea,  Moses  said,  "Stand  still,  and  see  the 
salvation  of  God."  But  when  he  laid  the  case 
before  Jehovah,  the  answer  came,  "Why  criest 
thou  to  me  ?  Speak  unto  the  children  of  Israel 
that  they  go  forward." 

Now,  there  is  one  way  that  the  question  of  time 
enters  into  the  inmost  soul  of  teaching.  For  it 
has  to  do  with  the  personal  character  of  the 
teacher  himself,  and  that  is  about  the  most  vital 
thing  for  any  school.  There  are  teachers,  and 
you  have  known  them  well,  who  have  power  to 
carry  their  pupils  with  them,  whatever  they  may 
do.  It  is  a  power  of  strong  suggestion,  and  it 
may  become  even  hypnotic  in  its  degree.  It  can 
produce  quick  and  striking  results,  for  it  gains  an 
autocratic  ascendancy  over  the  pupils'  minds. 
We  have  all  seen  the  warm  enthusiasm  which  a 
"magnetic"  teacher  can  arouse.  His  personal 
attractiveness  lends  new  life  to  the  school.  WTiere 
others  must  plod,  he  lends,  as  an  old  writer  put  it, 
"not  feete,  but  wings." 

Now,  one  who  has  such  power  as  this,  has  a 
keen  weapon  which  may  cut  for  good  or  ill.  He 
may  use  it  for  immeasurable  good.  He  may 
arouse  the  sluggish,  he  may  give  new  hope  to 
those  who  have  become  discouraged,  he  may  tide 
over  the  crisis  of  some  lives  by  his  inspiring  influ- 


THE   ART   OF  THE   TEACHER  237 

ence.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  may  work  great 
harm.  He  may  attach  his  pupils  so  closely  to 
himself  as  to  make  them  dependent  upon  him  for 
the  incentive  to  all  endeavor. 

A  test  of  such  a  teacher's  work  may  be  found 
in  the  experience  of  the  teacher  who  comes  after 
him.  Have  the  pupils  become  more  self-reliant, 
or  is  their  strength  and  interest  gone  with  the 
leader  who  galvanized  them  into  an  artificial  life  ? 
The  true  artist  in  the  school  may  have  much  or 
little  of  the  power  to  awaken  enthusiasm,  but  the 
best  of  his  work  abides.  A  great  teacher,  indeed, 
is  one  who  leads  us  to  think  great  thoughts,  but 
the  greatest  teacher  is  the  one  who  helps  us  most 
after  he  himself  is  gone.  Jesus  said  to  His  disci- 
ples, "It  is  expedient  for  you  that  I  go  away." 

But  this  discussion  should  not  be  prolonged. 
It  is  meant  to  do  no  more  than  make  a  small  be- 
ginning on  a  large  subject.  You  will  soon  be 
going  out  into  your  great  and  good  work  of  teach- 
ing school.  Let  me  bid  you  God-speed.  When 
Dean  Colet  founded  St.  Paul's  School  in  London, 
in  the  days  of  Henry  the  Eighth,  he  wrote  these 
words,  "I  charge  the  maisters  that  they  teche  all- 
ways  that  is  beste."  Let  us  take  his  words  for  the 
very  different  work  in  which  you  are  to  engage  — 
and  yet  it  is  the  same;  and  so  I  charge  you, 
young  women,  that  you  teach  always  things  that 
are  best. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


[NAMES  OF  PERSONS  ARE  IN  ITALICS.] 


Abbott,  Mary  N.,  187. 

Adams  act,  52-53. 

Agricultural  and  mechanical  col- 
leges, establishment,  50-53. 

Agricultural  education,  Adams  act, 
52-53;  and  Benjamin  Franklin, 
49;  Columbia  college,  50;  de- 
velopment, 45-59;  early  interest 
in,  46^-7;  Hatch  acts,  52;  his- 
tory, 49-53;  Michigan,  50; 
Michigan  state  agricultural  col- 
lege, 48,  50;  Moor's  Indian 
school,  49;  Merrill  acts,  50-52; 
Nelson  amendment,  53;  Penn- 
sylvania, 50 ;  training  of  experts, 
54. 

Agricultural  societies,  formation, 
47. 

Agriculture,  first  seed  distribution 
by  Government,  47. 

Alaska,  introduction  of  reindeer, 
130-131. 

Alderman,  E.  A.,  on  The  Growing 
South,  202-203. 

Apprenticeship  system,  48-49,  138. 

Arbitration,  international,  and  the 
public  schools,  99-109;  day  of 
special  observance  recommended, 
99-100. 

Art,  leadership  of  Europe,  127; 
moral  im plications,  73. 

Art  of  the  teacher,  221-238. 

Association  of  practical  housekeep- 
ing centers,  New  York,  177-178. 


Associations,  educational.  See  Ed- 
ucational associations. 

Attendance,  school,  statistics,  157- 
159. 

Ayers,  L.  P.,  on  dwindling  of  pub- 
lic school  classes,  159-160,  foot- 
note. 

BACKWARD  CHILDREN,  school,  125. 

Barrett,  John,  on  commercial  rela- 
tions with  South  America,  141. 

Bell,  Andrew,  monitorial  system,  124. 

Bureau  of  education.  See  U.  S. 
Bureau  of  education. 

CARNEGIE  TECHNICAL  SCHOOLS, 
Pittsburgh,  and  apprenticeship, 
138. 

Child-labor  laws,  155-157. 

Children,  United  States,  some  of 
their  needs,  147-165. 

Children's  nurses,  training,  171- 
172,  174-176,  178-179. 

Christianity,  interpretation,  91-92. 

Cincinnati,  University  of,  address 
delivered  at,  27-41;  experiment 
in  engineering  course,  138. 

Cities,  government,  30;  higher  life, 
28-30;  influence  of  universities 
on,  36-41 ;  influence  on  life,  35 ; 
institutional  life,  33;  public 
press,  32 ;  public  schools,  33-34 ; 
representative  men,  31-33;  self- 
respect  of,  27-41. 


16 


INDEX 


Cdet,  Dean,  on  teaching,  237-238. 

Columbia  college,  agricultural  edu- 
cation, 50. 

Compulsory  education,  154-157. 

Conference  of  governors,  states  and 
territories,  at  Washington,  D.  C., 
6-7. 

Congress,  influence  of,  3. 

Connecticut,  agricultural  societies, 
47;  public  trade  schools,  138. 

Consultations  de  nourrissons,  Paris, 
176-177. 

Cottage  instruction,  children,  Lon- 
don, 177-178. 

Crime  and  education,  9. 

Curriculum,  elementary  schools, 
comparative  study  (Payne),  116- 
117. 

DEMOCRACY  and  education,  67- 
68. 

Democracy  and  religion,  71-72. 

Department  of  agriculture.  See 
U.  S.  Department  of  agricul- 
ture. 

Department  of  superintendence. 
See  National  education  associa- 
tion. 

Draper,  A.  S.,  on  number  of  teach- 
ers, 140-141. 

ECOLE  DBS  MERES,  Paris,  176. 

Education,  allied  with  science,  63- 
64,  67-68;  ally  of  religion,  71; 
apprenticeship  system,  138;  com- 
pulsory, 154-157 ;  curriculum, 
elementary  schools,  comparative 
study  (Payne),  116-117;  ele- 
mentary, influence,  8-10;  ele- 
mentary schools,  non-sectarian, 
an  original  contribution  to,  129; 
emergence  of  world-standards  in 
school  and  university,  141-142; 
and  federal  government,  21; 
Germany,  leadership,  127-128; 
Germany,  system  of  higher,  effect 


on  student,  149 ;  high  schools,  an 
original  contribution  to,  129; 
humanism,  new,  114-116;  in- 
dustrial, a  national  interest,  211- 
217;  invention  in  field  of,  121- 
143;  kindergarten,  not  assimi- 
lated in  educational  system,  123- 
124;  leadership  of  Germany,  127- 
128;  manual  labor  schools,  49- 
50;  Massachusetts,  4 ;  monitorial 
system,  124;  moral,  in  Japan, 
80-81;  New  England  states,  4; 
normal  schools  and  universities, 
distinctive  functions  in  prepara- 
tion of  teachers,  199-206;  pub- 
lic schools,  city,  33-34;  and  in- 
ternational arbitration,  99-109; 
religious,  public  schools,  65; 
religious  and  secular,  63-73; 
school  attendance,  statistics,  157- 
159;  Sloyd  system,  125;  taxa- 
tion, support  of  schools  (Web- 
ster), 4;  teachers,  international 
comity,  140-141 ;  teachers,  train- 
ing, 199-206;  women,  higher, 
139-140 ;  women's  organiza- 
tions, work  of,  187-195. 

Education  and  crime,  9. 

Education  and  democracy,  67-68. 

Education  and  the  state,  9-10,  15- 
24. 

Educational  associations,  interna- 
tional, 140-141;  possible  co-op- 
eration between  those  of  differ- 
ent countries,  113-118;  state, 
co-operation,  142. 

Elementary  education,  influence, 
8-10. 

Elementary  schools,  American,  non- 
sectarian,  original  contribution 
to  education,  129. 

FEDERAL  GOVERNMENT,  and  educa- 
tion, 21. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  and  agricul- 
tural education,  49. 


INDEX 


243 


Froebel  F.  W.  A.,  124,  223. 
Fry,  Mrs.  Elizabeth,  188. 

GERMANY,  leadership  in  educa- 
tion, 127-128;  system  of  higher 
education,  effect  on  student, 
149. 

Government  by  influence,  3-24. 

Governors,  conference  of,  state  and 
territorial,  at  Washington,  D.  C., 
6-7. 

HAGUE,  The,  International  peace 
conference,  99. 

Hare,  A.  J.  C.,  188. 

Hatch  acts,  52. 

Henderson,  C.  R.,  176. 

High  schools,  American,  an  orig- 
inal contribution  to  education, 
129. 

Higher  education,  German  system, 
effect  on  student,  149. 

Holt,  Dr.  L.  E.,  on  training  of  chil- 
dren's nurses,  179. 

INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION,  a  national 
interest,  211-217. 

International  arbitration.  See  Ar- 
bitration, international. 

International  congress  on  the  wel- 
fare of  the  child,  address  before, 
147-165. 

International  peace  conference,  at 
The  Hague,  99,  100. 

Interparliamentary  union,  113. 

Inventions,  electric  railway,  first 
operated,  122 ;  field  of  education, 
121-143;  mechanical,  122. 

JAPAN,  Imperial  rescript,  80-81. 
Johnston,  R.  M.,  225. 

Keller,  Helen,  130. 
Kelley,  Mrs.  Florence,  on  training 
for  mother-work,  177-178. 


Kindergarten,  not  assimilated  in 
educational  system,  123-124. 

Kindergarten  nurses,  training,  179- 
180. 

LABOR,  organized,  and  industrial 
education,  216. 

Lake  Mohonk  conference  on  inter- 
national arbitration,  address  be- 
fore, 99-109. 

Lancaster,  Joseph,  monitorial  sys- 
tem, 124. 

Le  Conte,  Joseph,  222. 

Legislation,  methods  discussed,  13- 
17. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  234;  signing  of 
Morrill  act,  51. 

MANUAL  LABOR  SCHOOLS,  agricul- 
tural education,  49-50. 

Massachusetts,  agricultural  soci- 
eties, 47 ;  education  of  youth,  4 ; 
public  trade  schools,  138. 

Michigan,  agricultural  education, 
50. 

Michigan  state  agricultural  college, 
48,  50 ;  address  before,  45-59. 

Miele,  Dr.,  177. 

Moll-Weiss,  Mme.  Augusta,  176. 

Monitorial  system,  success  and  ul- 
timate failure,  124. 

Moral  instruction,  Japan,  80-81. 

Morality,  culture,  77-96;  and  re- 
ligion, 69-73. 

Morrill,  Justin  S.,  and  endowment 
of  agricultural  and  mechanical 
colleges,  50-52. 

Mothers'  congress,  147,  160. 

Mother-work,  problem  of  prepara- 
tion, 162-165 ;  training,  169-184. 

NATIONAL  COUNCIL  OF  EDUCATION, 
addresses  before,  113-118,  199- 
206. 

National  education  association,  co- 
operation with  similar  bodies  in 


244 


INDEX 


other  lands,  113,  117-118;  de- 
partment of  national  organiza- 
tions of  women,  address  before, 
187-195;  department  of  super- 
intendence, address  before,  211- 
217. 

National  government,  agricultural 
education,  50-53;  industrial  ed- 
ucation, 214-215. 

National  organizations  of  women, 
147-148. 

Nelson  amendment,  53. 

New  England  states,  instruction  of 
youth,  4. 

New  York,  agricultural  societies, 
47. 

Normal  schools,  and  universities, 
distinctive  functions  of,  in  prep- 
aration of  teachers,  199-206. 

North  Carolina,  University  of,  ad- 
dress delivered  at,  3-24. 

Nurses,  children's,  training,  171- 
172,  174-176,  178-179;  hospital, 
training,  172-174;  kindergarten, 
training,  179-180. 

PATENT  OFFICE.  See  U.  S.  Patent 
office. 

Payne,  B.  R.,  on  comparative  study 
of  public  elementary  school  cur- 
ricula of  the  leading  culture  na- 
tions, 116-117. 

Peace  conference,  international, 
The  Hague,  99,  100. 

Pennsylvania,  agricultural  educa- 
tion, 50;  agricultural  societies, 
47. 

REINDEER,    Alaska,    introduction, 

130-131. 

Religion  and  democracy,  71-72. 
Religion  and  morality,  69-73. 
Religion  and  science,  factors  in  life, 

66-67. 
Religious    and    secular    education, 

63-73. 


Religious  education,  public  schools, 

65. 
Religious     education     association, 

address  before,  63-73,  169-184. 

SCHOOL  GARDENS,  125. 

School  life,  overlapping  with  life  of 
wage-earner  and  producer,  152- 
154. 

Science  and  education,  63-64,  67- 
68. 

Science  and  public  service,  20-24. 

Science  and  religion,  66-67. 

Secondary  education.  See  High 
schools. 

Secular  and  religious  education, 
63-73. 

Sharpless,  President,  on  school- 
teachers, 226. 

Sloyd  system,  125. 

Social  service  and  science,  20-24. 

South,  the  growing  (Alderman), 
202-203. 

South  Carolina,  agricultural  soci- 
eties, 47. 

State  and  education,  9-10,  15-24. 

State  universities,  influence,  10-11; 
influence  on  government,  19. 

Stead,  W.  2'.,  116. 

Stephens,  A.  H.,  letter  to  Richard 
Malcolm  Johnston  on  old-field 
teachers,  225. 

TEACHERS,  art  of,  221-238;  inter- 
national comity,  140-141 ;  train- 
ing, 199-206. 

Th&rndike,  E.  L.,  on  dwindling  of 
public  school  classes,  159. 

Trade  schools,  138. 

U.  S.  BUREAU  OF  EDUCATION,  52; 

and  agricultural  education,   58- 

59. 
U.  S.  Department  of  agriculture, 

work,  52,  58. 


INDEX 


245 


U.  S.  Patent  office,  122;  center  of 
national  pride,  126. 

Universities,  in  cities,  relation  to 
school  system,  37-38;  influence, 
7-8,  34-37,  on  cities,  36-41,  on 
government,  15-20;  and  normal 
schools,  distinctive  functions,  in 
preparation  of  teachers,  199-206 ; 
state,  influence,  10-11,  on  gov- 
ernment, 15-20. 

University,  American,  an  original 
contribution  to  education,  129. 

University  extension,  125. 

University  of  Cincinnati,  address 
delivered  at,  27-41;  experiment 
in  engineering  course,  138. 

University  of  North  Carolina,  ad- 
dress delivered  at,  3-24. 

University  of  West  Virginia,  ad- 
dress delivered  at,  3-24. 

VANDERBILT  UNIVERSITY,  address 
delivered  at,  77-96 


Vassar  college  chapter  of  Phi  Beta 
Kappa,  address  before,  121-143. 

Vocational  schools,  173-174.  See 
also  Trade  schools. 

Washington,  George,  on  influence,  3. 

Washington,  George,  interest  in 
farming,  46. 

Webster,  Daniel,  on  taxation  for 
support  of  schools,  4. 

Wellesley  College,  address  deliv- 
ered at,  221-238. 

West  Virginia,  University  of,  ad- 
dress delivered  at,  3-24. 

Winthrop  normal  and  industrial 
college,  Rock  Hill,  S.  C.,  address 
delivered  at,  221-238. 

Women,  higher  education,  139- 
140 ;  organizations,  national, 
147-148,  work  in  education, 
187-195. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  PINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


FSB  26  1940 


r<HC         -0 

,^OV  j  4  •«*»« 

MAY    4 

1940 

C3.  ^  <kf\  v** 
Q  3  A**  *• 

Rlf*M  t        *«fc 

...... 

NOV  3  J94j 

.   DEC  14  1961 

NOV    819* 

fc?H   1   »•"* 

JUN  2  7  1967  9:4 

_  

^T 

,A\ 

JUN  1  fc  t,/  -^  p,. 

• 

y:-.e*3ir»  L»a 

^W^-V- 

II  |ii  4   o  IAAA               » 

! 

JUN  131992 

JUiSCCiRC  "JUN  17^92 

1954  L' 

LD  21-100?n-7,'39(402s) 

5Ua 


M 


